Submitted by Jan Samols on Thu, 22/04/2010 - 13:35
We would like to invite you to participate in the pilot period of the FluPhone study, an experiment being conducted by researchers at the University of Cambridge, the University of Liverpool and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
This study is concerned with social encounters between people and the spread of infections, and is based in Cambridge UK. It will use mobile phones to anonymously record how often people encounter each other, and study researchers will use this information to understand more about how fast infections, like swine flu, can spread amongst different people in Cambridge. Although the recent swine flu pandemic has slowed, the outcomes of this research will be useful in planning the response to future outbreaks.
Are you a party-animal or a shy wall-flower?
The study uses a mobile phone application that records when you encounter other participants using your phone's Bluetooth facility, which is present in most mobile phones.
We need your help!
The target population of the Fluphone study is the whole of the University of Cambridge and the general public in Cambridge. We would be very grateful to anyone willing to participate and try out the FluPhone software in a pilot period (15 May-30 June 2010). We would also appreciate it if participants could inform us of incompatibility issues, other problems or bugs you discover. These can be reported via the study website.
More information about the study can be found at http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/research/srg/netos/fluphone/
To enrol and download the FluPhone application, please visit http://www.fluphone.org.
