Now that the Swine flu has created quite a furore in India, various new services revolving around disseminating information about it have started. The latest of these is the social messaging platform, SMS Gupshup. They have established a community on Swine Flu called… SWINEFLU.
The community has over 2100 member now in less than a week and sends out daily messages which include preventive measures, symptoms, tests, resources and real time news to its subscribers. At the same time it tries to debunk myths and baseless rumors. Members usually receive one SMS a day. Besides SMSGupShup also opened their API and launched SMS apps. platform just like Facebook and Orkut did few months back.
In general, it’s heartening to see the use of social media and crowdsourcing for such causes. Electronic platforms such as Ushahidi which use the wisdom of the crowds (using SMS and Web) mashed up with Google maps to spread information are one innovation in this space.
Other portals
Other portals dedicated to this cause include Flutracker, by Rhizalabs (using Google maps) which I suppose is the biggest repository of Swine flu cases. There’s also Swine Flu maps, however, the list there doesn’t seem as comprehensive as the Flutracker. Another useful resource is Health Map, done with the help of the New England Journal of Medicine.
India Centric
For more India specific portals there’s Swine flu India, which provides with Swine flu related stats, updated very regularly. It also has a lot of very useful links including news, region/city wise updates, symptoms etc. Swineflu News is another portal which provides users with India relevant swine flu related news.
Note: To join the SMS Gupshup community and receive real time news on Swine Flu in your city sms JOIN SWINEFLU to 567678.
