You know the swine flu pandemic is serious when Harvard Medical School decides to get into the game commercially.
This week, the school's Health Publications Division released an iPhone application named “The HMSMobile Swine Flu Center," now selling for $1.99.
The goal? To utilize Harvard’s extensive knowledge in order to “tell you how you can reduce your risk of contracting H1N1 anytime, anywhere through your iPhone," according to the trippy promotional trailer below:
After the jump, FlyBy dissects what this two-dollar technological wonder actually does.
Using videos, animations, and text, the iPhone application allows you to:
- Learn
- Answers some of the common questions about swine flu, such as “what is Swine Flu?”
- Important question to ask.
- Get real time updates from Harvard Medical School reporting latest updates
- Seeing that it’s HMS, you’ll be getting a lot of text messages on your phone.
- Track the outbreaks near you through the HealthMap.
- “OH NO! A dude 13.4 miles from us has swine flu!”
- Answers some of the common questions about swine flu, such as “what is Swine Flu?”
- Prevent
- Prevent catching and spreading swine flu through interactive videos on “Hand Washing” or “Using a Mask”
- Totally not common sense. Thank goodness for Harvard Medical School!
- Recognize symptoms of the Swine Flu through the Interactive symptoms checker, which lists “confusion” and “unusually irritable” as symptoms of swine flu in a child.
- Flyby was sometimes confused and unusually irritable as a child, so... we're trendsetters?
- Acquire the recommended household supplies in preparation for swine flu, such as “batteries” and “can opener.”
- Energy bunny to the rescue
- Provide official H1N1 hotlines.
- Call me.
- Prevent catching and spreading swine flu through interactive videos on “Hand Washing” or “Using a Mask”
- Business
- Developed in collaboration with HBS as an exclusive add on.
- What is it about this exclusivity?
- How to prepare a business for the pandemic.
- Provides employee guides and signs, one of which says: “Flu virus spread when particles dispersed into the air through a cough or sneeze reach someone else’s nose. Always keep a safe distance from others.”
- Talk about being in a bubble.
- Developed in collaboration with HBS as an exclusive add on.
The application is available on the App store in English, Spanish, French, Italian, and German. It can be purchased here.
Overall, the application does what it sets out to do, which is to provide the public with timely information on prevention and outbreaks of the H1N1 virus. The features are easy to use and the graphics are well designed. The fact that people have instant access to the most updated information – where there is an outbreak, when the first symptoms are spotted, how to prevent infection – relieves some of the anxiety about the global pandemic. Still. This can't be good for all those hypochondriacs out there.
And what if (gasp!) one doesn't own an iPhone? The rest of us will have to make do with Google searches.