journal 6, June 7

Pandemics could be halted by cell phones

Japan is on top of the world in innovation and when it comes to cell phones they soar. Japan already uses their cell phones to purchase drinks at a vending machine, take attendance in class, and hop on board the train by scanning their phones at the gate which contain their tickets. But now the government is funding a study that may help decrease the spread of disease by 97%. A study shows that when one person is infected and passes three people and those three people pass it to three more people, after the second week, more than 60,000 people are infected. By using a cell phone to notify people of the infection and only two people are infected at a time, this number drastically reduces to 1500. The idea for the experiment is that every student will be equipped with a cell phone that tracks their every movement and who they come into contact with. A few students will be virtually infected and who ever they cross paths with will be notified by their cell phone to get checked out by the doctor. This has raised many privacy concerns as too whether or not people wanted to be tracked 24/7 and how efficient it will be. It is one of twenty-four tests.

The idea that cell phones can notify of a disease you may have just been infected and if should see a doctor is extraordinary. This innovation could potentially solve huge pandemics and help with situations and wide spread diseases like the swine flu. The only concerns I have are that I would not want to be tracked all day everyday nor would I want a message saying I was infected when really I was not at all. Many people these days are extremely concerned with their privacy, as they should be. So what makes companies and governments think they want to be tracked through their cell phones every where they go and with whom they visit. Don’t get me wrong, I think this is a great idea but no one wants their where-abouts known to someone random. Also, what would happen if you received a message saying you just contracted a rare, highly fatal disease through your cell phone in the middle of meeting? Would you not completely freak out? And the worst part would be if the message wasn’t even intended for you. So you leave the meeting in a fury and haul tail to the doctors to find out it was a false alarm. Good effort by the inventor but inefficient. They definitely need to figure out away to ensure the messages are 99.9% correct and sent to the wrote person before this product is released to the public otherwise it could cause society to go into complete chaos in the matter of minutes and turn the city, state, country up side down.

Article Used:

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/06/07/business/AP-AS-TEC-Japan-Mobile-Pandemic-Stopper.html

Additional References:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Using+Cell+Phones+to+Stop+Pandemics&aq=f&oq=&aqi=