As Zika and other diseases cause concern and worry for Olympians and spectators traveling to Rio de Janeiro next month, Brazil's Ministry of Health is launching a smartphone app for people to report their daily health conditions.
The app called Guardios da Saude, which translates to Guardians of Health, will crowdsource and aggregate data from users to monitor and detect outbreaks and epidemics in real-time. Users can report daily symptoms such as respiratory issues, diarrhea and rashes that are typical of known epidemics in the country, including Zika, dengue and chikungunya.
"The Guardioes da Saude mobile application is a resourceful tool for Brazilian and foreign citizens to share and disseminate information on health, making it an integral part of monitoring outbreaks, tracking potential spread and providing information to help people act," said Ricardo Barros, Brazilian Minister of Health, in a statement. "As an interactive and real-time tool, this app will help facilitate actions of public health services to identify and potentially contain public health events much faster."
The ministry launched the app in partnership with Skoll Global Threats Fund.
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