AUTHOR=Lwin May Oo , Yung Chee Fu , Yap Peiling , Jayasundar Karthikayen , Sheldenkar Anita , Subasinghe Kosala , Foo Schubert , Jayasinghe Udeepa Gayantha , Xu Huarong , Chai Siaw Ching , Kurlye Ashwin , Chen Jie , Ang Brenda Sze Peng TITLE=FluMob: Enabling Surveillance of Acute Respiratory Infections in Health-care Workers via Mobile Phones JOURNAL=Frontiers in Public Health VOLUME=5 YEAR=2017 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/public-health/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2017.00049 DOI=10.3389/fpubh.2017.00049 ISSN=2296-2565 ABSTRACT=

Singapore is a hotspot for emerging infectious diseases and faces a constant risk of pandemic outbreaks as a major travel and health hub for Southeast Asia. With an increasing penetration of smart phone usage in this region, Singapore’s pandemic preparedness framework can be strengthened by applying a mobile-based approach to health surveillance and control, and improving upon existing ideas by addressing gaps, such as a lack of health communication. FluMob is a digitally integrated syndromic surveillance system designed to assist health authorities in obtaining real-time epidemiological and surveillance data from health-care workers (HCWs) within Singapore, by allowing them to report influenza incidence using smartphones. The system, integrating a fully responsive web-based interface and a mobile interface, is made available to HCW using various types of mobile devices and web browsers. Real-time data generated from FluMob will be complementary to current health-care- and laboratory-based systems. This paper describes the development of FluMob, as well as challenges faced in the creation of the system.