Frequently Asked Questions
- How does it work?
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The basic idea is simple: you tell us where you meet people regularly and if you are feeling sick, we will combine this information and let you know if you are in a risk of getting sick.
This is what you do:
- List your places you visit regularly Go to illtags.com to add your places. These can include your workplace, school, hobby, group of friends, daycare, restaurant, supermarket, festival etc.
- If a bug gets you, illtag your symptoms You can do it in e.g. Facebook, Twitter, illtags.com etc. Type in "illtags: sore throat, headache" or use our symptom forms.
- Get ready to dodge the infections and stay healthy We will alert you if there is a bug lurking for you. You will receive alerts in your e-mail, Facebook account or Twitter account or you can follow the situation at illtags.com
This is what we do
We combine all the information we receive and the service is able to calculate different concentrations, changes and patterns in diseases and symptoms in different places. When there is an increased level of some symptoms or diseases in some of your listed places, the service will warn you about it, so that you can avoid it and stay healthy.
- What is a place?
- We would like to say that a place is a physical location, event, group or other situations, where people can spread or acquire an infectious disease. For a user, it is practically any place you visit regularly. The main idea is that you list all your important places, so that the accuracy of the analysis actually works.
- What is an illtag?
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An illtag represents your illness, symptoms or feelings, which you describe by typing a brief text or a tag. The service uses these tags to estimate the symptoms and diseases within individual users and different places.
The service does diagnostics only with recognisable symptoms, but that does not mean that other tags cannot be used. So if you feel like writing your own custom tags telling anything about you, please feel free.
You can input these illtags in any of the interfaces you might want to use (illtags.com, Facebook, Twitter etc.).
- At illtags.com use the upper left window to input your illtags e.g. "fever, headache" or pick the symptoms from the list.
- In Facebook you need to install Illtags-app and grant the offline access for full functionality. Then you can type in e.g. "illtags: fever, headache" at your normal status update or use Illtags updater which you can find below your status update window (small green logo). You can also do it at Illtags canvas page at apps.facebook.com/illtags.
- In Twitter you can send your illtags by sending a message to illtags and preceding your tags with # e.g. "@illtags #fever #headache".
- I can't find a place I would like to add. What should I do?
- For technical and copyright reasons, we are using free databases for place information. Currently we are using Geonames for large-scale information (cities, districts) and Openstreetmap for more detailed place information. These are both free, wiki style databases, so all place data is user-generated and there might be some inaccurate or unavailable information at times.
- If you cannot find a place you are looking for, you can wait our updates or you can contribute and add/modify place information on Geonames or Openstreetmap.
- How about my anonymity?
- If you use Facebook or Twitter, your friends or followers will naturally see you illtags. If you do it in illtags.com, no one will see they came from you and they will not show at Facebook or Twitter. The tags will be shown to other users who are linked to the same places as you, but no one can identify who put the tags there. Therefore, other users can see your tags, but there is no way to find out who is actually inputting the tags.
- What does the service do behind the scenes?
- Illtags service calculates different tags in different contexts. It uses analytics to combine different symptoms to different diseases to estimate the prevalence of diseases among users and places. The service recognises most common ways to describe different symptoms and can connect these to the official symptoms offered. Therefore it is not necessary to use our official symptoms, although those are safer considering the accuracy of the estimates.
- Is it scientifically and medically accurate?
- The service is primarily a service relying on common sense and simple mechanics. We believe that people can make their own judgement if we just give a possibility to see what kind of symptoms other people around have. Because of lot of possible errors in the data, we discourage people to make any actual medical decisions based on the estimates this service provides. Having said that, we are however working with doctors and public health officials to develop all the aspects of the services work as medically accurate as possible.
- How can you avoid an infection, if I get a warning?
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We believe in common sense. Usually just being a bit more careful helps. You might want to avoid the place for a while if it is not compulsory to go there. Here are some tips how to be careful:
- Avoid touching dirty surfaces. Everyday items such as door handles, computer keyboards, mobile and ordinary phones, remote controls, pens etc. are all common surfaces where germs can be found.
- Wash your hands. You can use hot water and soap or a sanitiser gel. Don't touch your face if you hands might have some germs.
- Avoid crowds. Stay out of the crowds and close quarters with sick people in them. Close proximity to other people will heighten your chances of getting a bug.
- Be careful with your eating and drinking. If you suspect a stomach bug, watch what you eat and use clean hands, containers and utensils.
- Why should I do all of this?
- We know it is an ambitious idea, but we think that an annoyance like a cold or a more severe disease like swine flu can be definitely avoided to some extent with this service. If you take part in the project, you can personally avoid at least some of the potential diseases, but also we can lessen the everyday annoyance and suffering of children, adults and elderly people, save huge medical costs for companies and society (i.e. tax payers) and feel better and more productive.
- I still have a problem/question. What should I do?
- We update this page according to the feedback we get, so check it regularly. If you have a problem, a question or a suggestion, please mail us at info AT illtags.com.
- What is the company behind illtags?
- Basically, we are just a few guys trying to come up with simple solutions to everyday problems. To read more information about the company, the people, the blog and the contact details, please visit Kaisla Innovations Ltd. website at www.kaislainnovations.com.