Developing a Social Network Web Application for Influenza Surveillance

Influenza needs to be tracked effectively in order for public health organizations to better respond to potential outbreaks. Public health informatics initiatives have been established to develop more accurate and timely disease surveillance systems. These systems receive data primarily from healthcare providers and laboratories, leading to delays in reporting. This may cause a slow response from public health professionals allowing an outbreak to potentially spread. Innovative methods for surveillance that interact directly with the public may provide more accurate and timely data. A Facebook application, "Will i be ill," (WIBI) was developed for influenza surveillance. The primary purpose of the application is to collect self-reported influenza like illness (ILI) cases from users through a simple web interface. There are four main sections of the application: "Are you ill," "Where are people ill," "Who's ill," and "What's in the news." The application collects symptom information from the user and their location. They are then notified whether or not they likely have an ILI. The data collected from the users of WIBI are then aggregated by county and displayed on a map. Users are encouraged to invite their friends to add the application to their Facebook profile. As their friends begin to use the application, the user can view which friends have submitted a report, unless it was marked as private. A live news feed provides users with links to articles related to influenza. A total of 75 users were invited to add the application and had messages posted to their Facebook profiles during the initial release of WIBI. Over a period of 9 weeks 58 users added the application and 7 users submitted a report. Due to a failure to meet user expectations and poor marketing, "Will i be ill" was not able to recruit enough users to successfully track influenza. Further development to incorporate data from official influenza surveillance sources, targeted marketing strategies to reach out to a larger audience, and additional development and infrastructure resources are required to accurately test whether or not a Facebook application can be used to supplement influenza surveillance systems.