摘要：In order to simultaneously learn about influenza activity and epidemiology across the nation, we harnessed the Internet and volunteers from around the nation to develop a participatory system for monitoring influenza-like-illness, called Flu Near You. Building on the work of participatory systems in other countries, we created a platform for weekly collection of the prevalence of 10 symptoms from volunteers. A freely available website provides an illustration of the distribution of users and their symptoms, by week. After a year of operation and with user feedback, we are able to evaluate design of the platform. Subsequent years will focus on expanding the system and detailed analysis of the data.
