HealthMap is a real-time disease epidemic intelligence tracking and visualization system that collects information from general news media, individual first-hand reports and public health sources around the world. Gaps in this effort clearly occur during times of crisis where traditional mechanisms may be dismantled. Clinical information gathered by deployed physicians can play a key role in providing early insight on emerging public health threats. We developed OutbreakMD to gather such information in real-time and combine with existing HealthMap informal and formal surveillance techniques.
Objective
OutbreakMD is a mobile Web application that was piloted in post-earthquake Port-au-Prince, Haiti. The application is designed for collecting, organizing and visualizing clinical information from individual patients to better monitor emerging infectious disease in disaster situations, in situations with limited public health infrastructure and unreliable Internet connectivity