Huron County-developed health app aims to expand across country

A new health app designed in Huron County is helping to track diseases across Ontario. CTV London’s Scott Miller has the details.

Friends heading overseas recently asked mathematical epidemiologist Chapin Korosec whether it was medically “safe” for their young family to travel to a certain part of Europe amidst a measles outbreak.

He crunched the numbers and sent them a one-page outline with the most current disease outlook. And then he started thinking.

“Maybe a lot of people would like this hyperlocal, active information for disease trends in their region. And then that was the spark that led to this idea,” said Korosec, a Goderich-based health tracking expert.

Six months, countless hours, and $3,000 later, Korosec, his wife Alexandra Kasper, and Michael Daley, all from Goderich, launched www.episense.ca. A web-based app that’s essentially a weather app for illness tracking, allowing people to see what the disease trends are in their specific area of the province.

“It is overwhelming. And we saw a lot of this during the COVID outbreak. There was lots of information available, but it’s not easy to digest or understand as an everyday person. So, with episense.ca, what we’re trying to do is make that information accessible and easy to digest, just like a weather forecast,” said Daley, Episense’s external relations lead.

“You don’t want to get sucked into deep analysis. You don’t want to get sucked into reading 10 different sources. So, the vision is really, you can wake up, you can check your app, episense.ca, and just see what is the real risk out there,” said Episense Operations Lead Kasper.

Korosec, who is a well-known expert in infectious disease modelling, explains how he makes episense.ca work.

“The first thing that we did was we created an algorithm that just goes to the internet and mines all the trustworthy public health and public facing data. And then I built an epidemiological modeling algorithm that just takes all that information and distills it into an easy to digest, easy to understand, dashboard,” he explained.

Right now, episense.ca, is tracking measles, COVID, RSV, influenza A, influenza B, and rhinovirus. Users input the first three letters of their postal code, and they get a dashboard with the current status of those illnesses and which way those illnesses are trending.

 A Lyme Disease tick tracker is under development, as well as an Ontario map with hotspots. Korosec said they’re using largely public health data, along with a self reporting tool to try and have the most accurate and understandable health data available to their users.

“If we can capture really severe epidemiological trends as they’re happening, and even get a few days lead time countrywide, then that would be a really valuable thing for society. So, we have our sights set on really expanding our algorithm and expanding the value of this type of application,” said Korosec.

Episense is just focusing on Ontario health data right now, but do have plans to expand Episense across Canada.

“Right now, we’re focused from Thunder Bay to Ottawa. But we do want to take this nationally. It’s a solution designed by Canadians for Canadians to help them make better decisions about their health,” said Daley.

Episense just launched a week ago, but these three Goderich parents, and now app developers, are hoping their new venture takes off and helps protect families from coast to coast.

“It’s really, to me, a disease decision making tool that can help keep your family safe,” said Kasper.