Health University of Zurich app tracks illnesses while traveling

Someone falls ill on every third trip. Gastrointestinal complaints and respiratory symptoms are the most common. These are the findings of a study evaluating a travel app developed at the University of Zurich (UZH).

The app should help to detect outbreaks of infectious diseases at an early stage in the future, the UZH announced on Tuesday. It could thus help to track the emergence and spread of infectious diseases such as dengue fever and Mpox.

UZH researchers developed the app in collaboration with the World Health Organization (WHO). In the app, people answer a few questions about their health every day while traveling, the university wrote. The app also records information such as location, weather data and air quality.

The research team analyzed data between April 2022 and July 2023, covering 470 trips by 609 people on all continents. Almost a fifth of the cases of illness were due to gastrointestinal complaints. Asia is the hotspot for this. This was less of a problem in Africa. Overall, more women reported diarrhoeal diseases than men. 17 percent of cases of illness were respiratory diseases such as colds, according to the UZH. These occurred most frequently in Europe.