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Information wants to be exploited—and that's generally a good thing. Exploitation has downsides too and these seem to be manifest when you look at the growing epidemic of iPhone apps pertaining to swine (novel, Mexican, or H1N1) influenza that you can pay to download from Apple's iTunes for use on your iPhone. As of today I count nineteen paid apps (in the UK store) and thirteen provided free-of-charge (although these may include paid advertisements). Do we need so much choice? Do we need flu updates on mobile devices at all? What are the risks associated with this expeditious development?

'Greedy pigs' priced from 0.59p to £2.99.

Some of the apps, such as Swine Flu Tracker Map (free), appear to be fairly well implemented, often merely aggregating content from online information sources but sometimes paraphrasing static material such as FAQs:

Other apps are very clearly rush-jobs, some even turning what is a serious global threat into a game. None of these applications are produced by authoritative official information sources such as WHO or the CDC, and most have the audacity to charge for information they had no hand in producing but have extracted verbatim from freely available sources. Information that is constantly changing. Can these authors maintain the motivation to constantly update the static advice within their applications? Can Apple's App Store approval process, with it's virtually non-existant quality assurance standards, possibly keep up? Some apps—specifically those incorporating Google Maps—are in violation of the data provider's terms of use (others are using OpenStreetMap, presumably in reflection of this).

I've inferred elsewhere that Apple has made writing and publishing an iPhone app all too easy; almost every geek and his/her pet pig can do it. Again this has both positive and negative aspects, but the real worry here lies with the motivation of the swine flu app sellers. Do they publish out of altruistic leanings, or rather in hope of profiting from the fear of their fellow human beings? The risk of disseminating misinformation must surely be high in either case, as those producing these applications are likely without specialist knowledge (except, perhaps, in marketing) and are not accountable for ensuring the timeliness and accuracy of the information resources they appropriate. Indeed, Wikipedia is arguably not the most credible of references.

All I'm saying is that this app outbreak raises more questions than it answers. If you're concerned about the prospect of pandemic flu (and we all should be) then I would urge you to stick to the official sources to counter the risk of misinformation (e.g. in the UK, the website of the Health Protection Agency).

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