FluPhone App To Follow Epidemics

A mobile phone focus could help guard the way transmittable diseases such as influenza are spread.

The FluPhone app was created by researchers at the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory.

Volunteers' phones propitious with the app "talk" to any other, recording how many people any "infected subject" meets during an supposed epidemic.

The university is a of 7 institutions working on the investigate to lower the repercussions of epidemics.

The FluPhone app uses Bluetooth technology to anonymously record communication between volunteers entangled in the study.

When mobile phones advance in to shut proximity, that fact is available and information is sent automatically to the research team.

Professor Jon Crowcroft and Dr Eiko Yoneki, co-principal investigators of the study, mentioned they believed the composed information could be used to copy amicable communication during a actual widespread or pandemic.

A three-month FluPhone commander study, using a simple chronicle of the app, was conducted in Cambridge in 2010.

Dr Yoneki said: "The information was a profitable perception in to how human communities are formed, how ample time people outlay together, and how often they meet.

"Such information uncover intricate network-like structures, that is really utilitarian for bargain the expansion of disease."

Prof Crowcroft explained epidemiologists traditionally guard how a illness spreads by asking patients to keep diaries of their movements and amicable contacts.

"That's really heavy-going and people often dont think about to do it, or dont think about who they've met," he said.

The FluPhone app was, he explained, a more arguable way to record meeting between "infectious subjects".

"Provided you have people's permission, you can upload the data, and medical researchers can see who met whom inside of the set of volunteers, without there being any omitted encounters.

"That's really critical since meeting a lot of people might be the leading way diseases are spread.

"Armed with that arrange of information, medics could then send recommendation towards the people and maybe slow down the expansion of an epidemic.

"As long as you obtain a in accord with number of people receiving part, meeting other people receiving part, then you will obtain that understanding," he said.

An upgraded chronicle of the FluPhone app has right away been expelled that can broadcast "fake pathogens" to volunteers' phones.

Prof Crowcroft mentioned the group was right away able to run "what-if experiments" on the volunteers by incidentally selecting that phones should be "infected".

"The information composed could surprise the way medical recommendation is given by the supervision during a actual epidemic," he said.

"We probably can't end an widespread only by advice, but if you can slow it down, medical involvement could be destined more effectively, for e.g. at treating major cases, or building vaccines."