- 100 students at the University of Michigan carried Android smartphones for 10 weeks with an app, iEpi, that monitored who they came into contact with and where they went. The app also polled the students about flu-like symptoms, and the researchers took throat swabs regularly.
- Duh -- when one student got sick, the other students he or she was in contact with were also more likely to get sick. According to researchers, "smartphones and wearable health and fitness devices allow us to collect information like a person's heart rate, blood pressure, social interactions and activity levels with much more regularity and more accurately than was possible before. You can keep a continuous logbook."
- This study is another example of the immense amounts of never-before-collected data that lie on our smartphones that techniques like machine learning can use to develop new insights.
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