This new app maps out how many people are sick in your neighborhood

Doctor
(Image credit: iStockphoto)

Disease maps are a compelling case for "ignorance is bliss," but if you're wondering who in your neighborhood has the flu, well, there's an app for that.

Johnson & Johnson’s Healthyday crowdsources data from doctor's offices, local Google searches, and status updates on Twitter and Facebook to map health trends, specifying symptoms as "flu," "cold," or "allergy" so users can take an educated guess as to the cause of that stuffy nose. Healthyday additionally allows users to break down the reports so they can target the exact streets where coughs and other ailments occurred.

"[The goal is] to really give you this idea for the first time, the honest to God answer to 'what's going around?'" Eric Weisberg, the executive creative director at ad agency JWT, said.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_original","fid":"120244","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","height":"533","typeof":"foaf:Image","width":"300"}}]]

(Healthyday app/iTunes)

"Despite living in a digital age, no one else has yet addressed these common health issues in a mobile format," Sumeet Narula, Digital Brand Manager for McNeil Consumer Healthcare, said in a company statement.

The app is free to download — but do you really want to know?

Explore More
Jeva Lange

Jeva Lange was the executive editor at TheWeek.com. She formerly served as The Week's deputy editor and culture critic. She is also a contributor to Screen Slate, and her writing has appeared in The New York Daily News, The Awl, Vice, and Gothamist, among other publications. Jeva lives in New York City. Follow her on Twitter.