Participatory Epidemiology: Use of Mobile Phones for Community-Based Health Reporting

Abstract

Traditional health systems serve a key role in protecting populations, but are typically hierarchical, and information often travels slowly. Novel Internet-based collaborative systems can have an important role in gathering information quickly and improving coverage and accessibility. Mobile Internet usage is growing rapidly worldwide, making real-time information tools more readily available to both clinicians and the general public. We present a brief summary of some promising mobile applications for health monitoring and information sharing, together with preliminary results from a study of our deployment of a smartphone application which enabled the general public to report infectious disease events. These early efforts at tapping the power of mobile software tools illustrate potentially important steps in improving health systems as well as engaging the public as participants in the public health process.