Promising Website

With Gabriel battling a cold, we're not going to be able to go to Sacramento until after this weekend sometime unfortunately. There's no sense in others, particularly the baby, catching what he's dealing with right now.

But today, I stumbled upon what looks to be a promising website for parents of little ones and other germaphobes.

Who is Sick? utilizes Google Maps functionality and lets the user look up self-reported illnesses within a zipcode and the surrounding metro area. A large map on the screen shows little pie-chart icons that represent reported illnesses and each pie wedge color, if present, represents the symptom reported. If you click on any particular pie chart, a box of details about the person (age, gender, etc.) and all of their symptoms plus other comments appears.

One can also anonymously report your own illness or that of a family member to add to the data and information available.

To take it for a test run, I searched our zip code and found that runny noses/congestion seem to be happening a bit in the Hillsboro/Washington County area. Now keep in mind these are self-reported illnesses by people who have found this new/relatively unknown website. But as it grows, it'll be quite fascinating as one can watch for outbreaks of specific illnesses, by age and location. So you can rule out taking the toddler to the park if there are a lot of cold symptoms being reported in a short amount of time.