WHAT'S GOING ROUND

What's Going Round provides a social network that allows users to connect over location and symptoms so they can help each other identify and treat illnesses that are "Going Round". Once registered, users can enter persons to be tracked, and locations for those persons (e.g., home, work, school addresses). Cases can then be created for those persons that reflect illnesses that they're experiencing. Cases include information such as symptoms, treatments, diagnoses, and log entries. All data... is dated so that a progression of an illness can be tracked. Data entry fields are color coded so that users can see what data will be presented to the general public as-entered vs. slightly modified for privacy (e.g., birth dates are converted to age in years for cases, locations are "blurred"), vs. not shared at all. Once a case is entered, the user can search the database for other cases near their locations that have a subset of the entered symptoms. Results are presented in tabbed areas based on all locations together and individual locations, sorted by the number of matching symptoms, date, etc.. Cases can be selected from the results list and viewed in detail. This detail excludes personally identifying information. In fact, the database design prevents access to personal information from case data. At the bottom of every case there is a case forum that allows anonymous conversations between registered users. The overall system goal is to allow people who may not know each other personally to share information about the illnesses that are going around, and how they are treating them, and whether the treatments are working. The hope is that this will reduce anxiety about illnesses as well as reducing health care expenses for unnecessary trips to the doctor. The site also creates an ongoing health record that can be used to track long-term individual health trends.More