Sickweather Apple Watch app puts a ‘Geiger counter for sickness’ on your wrist

There were a few days this winter, actually quite a few days, when I would’ve loved having the Sickweather app on my wrist. And about five of those days were during the Consumer Electronics Show, a toxic Petri dish where everybody gets sick.

Sickweather‘s iPhone app draws upon a variety of sources to create a real-time map of where and when illness strikes. The Baltimore-based company has put elements of that information in an app for the Apple Watch — along with a new feature. It sounds and looks pretty cool, although I’ve not tried it yet.

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The Watch app includes Sickweather’s new SickScore, which provides you a relative threat index of contagious illness in your immediate area.

Sickweather’s service works by analyzing nearby contagious illnesses found in over 2 million reports gathered and processed each month from combined sources, such as social media, the Sickweather user community, and Sickweather partner apps. An algorithm then measures the nearby illnesses by their relative reproductive score along with other demographic factors, such as population density.

It’s kinda like Waze for flu bugs.

“Now with SickScore on Apple Watch, you have a virtual Geiger counter for sickness available on your wrist,” says Graham Dodge, the CEO of Sickweather.

The app includes a feature that times you while you wash your hands, to make sure you do it for the 20 seconds recommended by public health authorities. The Watch buzzes your wrist when the 20 seconds is up.

The CDC says proper handwashing can save up to a million lives each year. “Our Apple Watch app emphasizes the timely nature of that public health benefit by prompting that action with SickScore,” Dodge says.

The Sickweather Apple Watch app also extends Sick Zone alerts from the iPhone app to the watch, alerting you on your wrist when you enter known sick zones (areas where illnesses have been recently reported).

The Sickweather iPhone app and Apple Watch app are available for free in the App Store or, soon, in the Apple Watch App Store.

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Sickweather was featured on the Today Show in 2012 for successfully identifying the early start of the 2012 flu season six weeks before the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC).