- Title
- Insights from flutracking: thirteen tips to growing a web-based participatory surveillance system
- Creator
- Dalton, Craig; Carlson, Sandra; Butler, Michelle; Cassano, Daniel; Clarke, Stephen; Fejsa, John; Durrheim, David
- Relation
- JMIR Public Health and Surveillance Vol. 3, Issue 3
- Publisher Link
- http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/publichealth.7333
- Publisher
- JMIR Publications
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 2017
- Description
- Flutracking is a weekly Web-based survey of influenza-like illness (ILI) in Australia that has grown from 400 participants in 2006 to over 26,000 participants every week in 2016. Flutracking monitors both the transmission and severity of ILI across Australia by documenting symptoms (cough, fever, and sore throat), time off work or normal duties, influenza vaccination status, laboratory testing for influenza, and health seeking behavior. Recruitment of Flutrackers commenced via health department and other organizational email systems, and then gradually incorporated social media promotion and invitations from existing Flutrackers to friends to enhance participation. Invitations from existing participants typically contribute to over 1000 new participants each year. The Flutracking survey link was emailed every Monday morning in winter and took less than 10 seconds to complete. To reduce the burden on respondents, we collected only a minimal amount of demographic and weekly data. Additionally, to optimize users' experiences, we maintained a strong focus on "obvious design" and repeated usability testing of naïve and current participants of the survey. In this paper, we share these and other insights on recruitment methods and user experience principles that have enabled Flutracking to become one of the largest online participatory surveillance systems in the world. There is still much that could be enhanced in Flutracking; however, we believe these principles could benefit others developing similar online surveillance systems.
- Subject
- epidemiology; surveillance; influenza; user centered design; World Wide Web
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1396609
- Identifier
- uon:34074
- Identifier
- ISSN:2369-2960
- Rights
- © Craig Dalton, Sandra Carlson, Michelle Butler, Daniel Cassano, Stephen Clarke, John Fejsa, David Durrheim. Originally published in JMIR Public Health and Surveillance (http://publichealth.jmir.org), 17.08.2017. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work, first published in JMIR Public Health and Surveillance, is properly cited. The complete bibliographic information, a link to the original publication on http://publichealth.jmir.org, as well as this copyright and license information must be included.
- Language
- eng
- Full Text
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Goal 3: Good Health and Well-Being
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