Yes, it turns out there’s an app for just about everything — even for the flu.

The People’s Choice Award in the U.S. “Flu App Challenge” has been won by a Seattle startup, Influ Technologies, that offers technology for tracking the spread of disease using crowd-sourced data. The company’s apps for iPhone and Android earned the award — and a modest but respectable $3,500 — in the contest sponsored by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Here’s a description of the approach from the contest website …

Influ is a mobile phone app and web service for anonymous reporting and tracking the spread of infectious diseases such as the flu, all in real-time and in high spatial resolution. Reports are submitted anonymously through a simplified, text-free, intuitive graphical interface. Reports are displayed on an interactive map as high-resolution geo-location data,  so users can make real-time practical decisions to maintain their health based on disease activity near them.  Influ also uses a scoring system to let users track how they’re doing at limiting the spread of disease and maintaining their health, whether it’s staying at home if they’re sick, staying away from nearby disease hotspots or using the service regularly. The app combines real-time user reports with a built-in RSS feed reader for keeping track of developments about the flu and other diseases using the CDC’s RSS feeds and other news sites on the web. Influ is available as a free app for the Android and iPhone, as well as a web site with a regularly updated map and RSS feed.

The CDC announced the prizes yesterday.

First place, of course, went to an app called “Flu-Ville.”

Thanks to Bill Schrier for pointing this out on Twitter.

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