Introducing HealthMap: Tracking The Germs In Your Neighborhood

Are chills and fever rampaging through your office? Have three of your neighbors reported rabid bats lately? Is half your child's grade out with the stomach flu? Now you can check the most local of health news online, and post reports that help others do the same.

This week, CommonHealth introduces the Massachusetts HealthMap, a disease-tracking tool overseen by researchers at Children’s Hospital Boston with input from public health trackers, the media and you. We tend to rely on word of mouth to find out important community health news, but HealthMap offers an alternative way to get and transmit information that you might otherwise miss. It’s a non-commercial project that tracks public health outbreaks and gathers reports from official sources, including the Department of Public Health, and the media, and updates them hourly. Reports from the public are curated and updated once a day.

We're still in beta mode, but please check it out and tell us what kind of “outbreak” — large or small — is going on in your world. To post a report, all you do is click on “Outbreak Missing” and we ask that you be as specific as possible. Your identity will not be published, but you may be contacted by a health professional to confirm details.