The other day, President Obama, declared the H1N1 (swine flu) a national emergency in response to the delay of the H1N1 vaccine to the public. One of the biggest problems we are facing is easy to understand information about what is the H1N1 virus? What are the symptoms? How do you treat it? Wouldn’t it be nice if you could get timely and reliable information about the swine flu, that was easy to understand, and available on your iPhone? If you answered “Yes!” You’ll definitely want to download the HMSMOBILE Swine Flu app for the iPhone.
About the HMSMobile Swine Flu App
The HMSMobile Swine Flu app is part of a broader strategy by Harvard Medical School to leverage the convergence of smart phones and public health information in a series of iPhone apps, starting with the swine flu.
The Swine Flu app is very easy to use and broken up into three primary sections: Learn, Prevent, and Work.
The Learn section is made has four subsections: Video Guides (Pandemics, The H1N1 Virus, Vaccination, Treatment)-videos that explain the various topics in easy to understand language and visuals, News Feed which features updates news about the swine flu, Global Infection which is a swine flu “Health Map” that allows you get detailed swine flue outbreaks based on your location, and HMS Talk Back where you submit a question to HMS and you’ll either get a direct response back or video-cast.
Prevent has four sections as well: Video Guides (Droplet Infections, Protect Your Hands, Public Places, Hand Washing, Using a Mask, If You are Symptomatic); Do I have Swine Flu an interactive series of questions for either those over 3 years of age or over 3 years of age; Survival Kits lists of Electrical Supplies, Stay at Home, And Non Perishable Foods you should have in the event of a pandemic; Local Hotlines gives you a location based hotline phone number for you to call.
The Work section is developed in collaboration with Harvard Business School and is aimed at providing businesses with specific information on how to best prepare an enterprise for managing through the pandemic. This is an add-on and not included in the price of the app, but it would include Employee handbooks and printable signage, preparedness guides, global hotlines for H1N1, etc. This type of information is not dissimilar to what hospitals have for emergency and disaster preparedness, but at the business level.
Is It Worth $1.99?
The HMSMobile Swine Flu app is a very well executed that takes advantage of all the best features of the iPhone, like location awareness, video and phone integration. The first thing you’ll come to appreciate is how easy it is to navigate within the app. There is no guessing or surprises as to what type of content you’ll find in each section.
The videos in both the Learn and Prevent sections are educational and easy to understand, that you won’t get bored or be left saying to your self, “huh?” after watching them. The video on H1N1 Virus has some great graphics and one the best summaries on the virus in my opinion.
The other strong feature is the swine flu “Health Map” that allows you to use your iPhone’s GPS to track and get information about the swine flu in your area. The HMSMobile Swine Flu app displays a Google Map with the push pins indicating swine flu activity in your area. Click on the push pin and it will display the location and display a snippet of the news stories about the swine flu. The only problem when clicking on the link is that the app opens Safari to read the news story and leave the app. The one thing I would like to see added to this “Health Map” in a future release is to be able to lookup locations offering the vaccine to the public.
The symptom checker is nice little interactive way to determine if you are exhibiting symptoms that indicate H1N1 virus and if you should see the doctor. The questions are pretty basic and require a simple, “yes” or “no” and available for both adults 3 and over and children under 3 years old.
The HMS Talk Back feature of the Learn section of the app is well executed and not something I’d expect to see. The ability to seamlessly send an email to Harvard Medical School about a question or concern you have without leaving the app is a great! There is nothing worse than having to leave the app and to do a task like email and have to return back to the app. The best part is that you will get a response.
Overall, I think the HMSMobile Swine Flu app is an excellent first start in educating people about their health and making information more readily available. I think the $1.99 price tag makes the H1N1 Swine Flu app a bargain, considering the amount of information provided.
For less than a tall cappuccino you can have easy to understand and reliable information from Harvard Medical School at your fingertips.
HMSMobile Swine Flu App $1.99
