ArticleJMIR public health and surveillance2017
Insights From Flutracking: Thirteen Tips to Growing a Web-Based Participatory Surveillance System.
Article in JMIR public health and surveillance, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 23 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
23 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Representation of marginalised populations in digital surveillance for notifiable conditions in Australia: a systematic review.Perspectives in public health · 2024Pooled it
- SALGINTR: development and early evaluation of a low-cost cloud-based digital participatory surveillance system for influenza-like Illness among physicians in Türkiye - a proof of concept.BMC infectious diseases · 2026Article
- Collaborative Surveillance: Using a Minimum Set of Key Data Parameters for One Health Participatory Surveillance.JMIR public health and surveillance · 2025Article
- Identification of key factors related to digital health observational study adherence and retention by data-driven approaches: an exploratory secondary analysis of two prospective longitudinal studies.The Lancet. Digital health · 2025Article
- Biases in Routine Influenza Surveillance Indicators Used to Monitor Infection Incidence and Recommendations for Improvement.Influenza and other respiratory viruses · 2024Article
- Drawing on the Development Experiences of Infectious Disease Surveillance Systems Around the World.China CDC weekly · 2024Article
- A Novel Web-Based Application for Influenza and COVID-19 Outbreak Detection and Response in Residential Aged Care Facilities.JMIR public health and surveillance · 2024Article
- Enabling Multicentric Participatory Disease Surveillance for Global Health Enhancement: Viewpoint on Global Flu View.JMIR public health and surveillance · 2023Article
- Forecasting COVID-19 activity in Australia to support pandemic response: May to October 2020.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Enrollment and Retention of Participants in Remote Digital Health Studies: Scoping Review and Framework Proposal.Journal of medical Internet research · 2022Article
- Calculating incidence of Influenza-like and COVID-like symptoms from Flutracking participatory survey data.MethodsX · 2022Article
- Evaluating an app-guided self-test for influenza: lessons learned for improving the feasibility of study designs to evaluate self-tests for respiratory viruses.BMC infectious diseases · 2021Article
- Challenges for Nontechnical Implementation of Digital Proximity Tracing During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Media Analysis of the SwissCovid App.JMIR mHealth and uHealth · 2021Article
- Article
- Participatory Surveillance Based on Crowdsourcing During the Rio 2016 Olympic Games Using the Guardians of Health Platform: Descriptive Study.JMIR public health and surveillance · 2020Article
- The Fever Coach Mobile App for Participatory Influenza Surveillance in Children: Usability Study.JMIR mHealth and uHealth · 2019Article
- Text-Based Illness Monitoring for Detection of Novel Influenza A Virus Infections During an Influenza A (H3N2)v Virus Outbreak in Michigan, 2016: Surveillance and Survey.JMIR public health and surveillance · 2019Article
- Next Generation Technology for Epidemic Prevention and Control: Data-Driven Contact Tracking.IEEE access : practical innovations, open solutions · 2019Article
- Comparison of crowd-sourced, electronic health records based, and traditional health-care based influenza-tracking systems at multiple spatial resolutions in the United States of America.BMC infectious diseases · 2018Article
- Estimating the Risk of Influenza-Like Illness Transmission Through Social Contacts: Web-Based Participatory Cohort Study.JMIR public health and surveillance · 2018Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
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.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.