The document discusses several real-time flu tracking websites and apps that allow users to report flu symptoms to help track outbreaks in real-time. It notes that deaths from pandemics like the 1918 flu were far greater than wartime casualties. Several case studies of websites like Flutrack.org, Flutracking, and Google Flu Trends are examined that allow geo-located, open-source reporting of flu symptoms. A table compares features of these sites like geo-location, filtering, map interfaces, data sources and more. Ongoing work areas are listed like personal alerts, weather data, mobile apps, prediction capabilities and expanding data sources and localization.

1. Flutrack.org
Real-time tracking of flu symptoms
Karolos Talvis, Kostantinos Chorianopoulos

2. Motivation
• Deaths
– WWI 21 million
– 1918 flu pandemic 50-100 million
– WWII 60-85 million
– 1957 Asian flu 1-1.5 million
– 1968 Hong Kong flu 0.75-1 million
– USA 3.300-49.000 yearly
• Interaction design for epidemics?

3. Case study: Cholera outbreak

4. Interaction Design for Epidemics
• Epidemiology task flow:
Symptoms
Analysis
Reporting
• User requirements:
– Open-data, Geo-located, Real-time

5. www.flutracking.net

6. Mappyhealth.com

7. GermTracker.org

12. Flu epidemic 2012
December 3, 2012.
December 27, 2012.
http://flutrack.org

13. Accuracy

14. December 15th, 2013
Google Flu Trends

15. Comparison to related Work
Flutrack.org
Flutracking
Flu trends
Mappyhealth Germtracker
Geo location
Yes
City
City
Yes
Yes
Filtering
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
No
Real-time
20 min
1 week
1 day
1 hour
Yes
Map
Interactive
Interactive
Fixed
No
Interactive
Symptoms
Tweets
Emails
Search
Tweets
Tweets
Open Data
Real-time
No
Summary
Summary
No
Open Source
GitHub
No
No
No
No

16. Ongoing Work
• Personal reports, alerts, aggravation
• Weather
• Mobile App
• Prediction
• Flights
• Plug-in architecture
–
Scalability: Cloud hosting
–
Data source: Facebook, SMS
–
Localization (Languages)
http://flutrack.org