WhoIsSick.org is a new Google Maps Mashup where users enter their current illness and location. The site can then be used to track different illnesses around the world using Google Maps.
Not only is ‘Who Is Sick’ an amazing use of the Google Maps API in a social fashion, but it can also be used as a resource by physicians and patients to track illnesses in their neighborhoods. I’d also expect sites like WebMD to create their own models based upon the ‘Who Is Sick’ idea.
The genesis of the idea for Who Is Sick was actually from an acute need that our founder had when his wife started experiencing severe stomach pain while they were on vacation. With no way of knowing whether the pain was from appendicitis, food poisoning, or some other stomach illness, our vacationing couple went to the emergency room and waited for 4 hours (BTW – this was from 11pm until 3am) to be seen by a doctor…only to be told that there was a stomach flu going around and that if the pain didn’t go away in 24 hours, to come back. Wow. 4 hours wait for that…in the middle of the night… (of course the doctor did check to see if it was appendicitis so they weren’t all bad…).
Our founder thought, “if only there were a website that had current AND local sickness information, maybe we could have avoided the long wait.” Needless to say, this started the wheels spinning and a couple of months later, Who Is Sick was born.
Our inspiration for the design of the site came from Craigslist and HousingMaps. One – a remarkably simple and intuitive user generated content site that has bucked the trend of “slick and cool” for simple and easy. The other – the first truly groundbreaking mashup that also put simplicity over full-featured functionality and complexity. We’ve done our best to provide the same type of experience.
