Scientists from Duke University and the University of North Carolina at chapel hill have developed a mobile app that detects when the user is at risk of Contracting the flu. They argue that new methods of data analysis on personal health, and lifestyle, obtained with the help of smartphones, can help to identify people who are at risk of catching flu.
Katherine Heller from the University of North Carolina has developed a model that allows to predict the spread of flu from one person to another. She reported that this approach allows for individual daily forecast for every patient.
To test the model, researchers observed 100 students for 10 weeks during the influenza season in 2013. Students carry smartphones with built-in iEpi, which used Wi-Fi and GPS modules to observe where they went and who they were in contact.
According Vashaspina, the model allows to calculate the probability of how to spread the flu to each student and identified personal hygiene habits that can help to avoid infection or speed up their recovery.
Researchers have confirmed that when a student got the flu, then his friends had a greater likelihood of Contracting the virus. They also found that students who smoked or drank alcohol, took longer to recover from illness.
The study results were published in the journal “Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining”.
