Sickweather: Forecasting Your Next Flu

Lucky for those of us cruising in the Southern Hemisphere, we are closing the door on those chilly months of winter woolies, over-indulgence in spiced lattes and, of course, the inevitable bout of the flu blues.

Being a mild hypochondriac with a less-than-Spartan immune system, if I get caught with that seasonal throat tickle, it normally takes me down for a week and is therefore something that I will aim to avoid at any cost. Cue: Sickweather.com, aka your online health intel.

Sickweather is a website that works on the idea of letting you know what illnesses are out there and how likely you are to catch them. With more and more people using social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter to update their friends on when they're sick (come on, you know you've done at least one "boo-hoo, I'm sick" status) there became an immense growth in the amount of real time data available on the health of different populations.

The site uses this data to create a weather map of sicknesses. There's something a little Hitchcock-meets-The-Happening about seeing a map with a blocked out swarms labelled Bronchitis or Pneumonia with directions as to where they are headed that week; but this is quite literally the idea. By tracking and marking symptoms, Sickweather allows you to see what is going around in your area or what maladies are on their way.

Because Sickweather mines this data from social forums, you can zone in on your circle of friends. This means you are able to see which of your buddies are sick or are in a high-risk-of-throaty-cough zone. It's then in your court whether you head over with some Chicken soup and herbal teas or avoid them like the plague (yes, pun intended).