If you have an iPhone or an iPod Touch and are curious about health alerts or infection outbreaks near where you live or work, there’s a new app just for you. “Outbreaks Near Me”, a joint project of Children’s Hospital Boston and the MIT Media Labs, allows users to see at a glance any nearby health warnings that may impact them.

Displayed in an attractive graphical format, the app uses the location services on your phone or iPod to find where you are and creates an instantaneous plot of disease outbreaks with pins indicating their location on a map. Touching the pin will bring up a list of health alerts with detailed descriptions of the nature of the warning.

Users can also choose to have alerts emailed to them for a broad number of conditions ranging from H1N1 swine influenza to West Nile Virus. Just enter your email and the app will use your current location to track outbreaks for the conditions you have chosen and will send you updates should an outbreak occur.

Cases can also be reported through the app via the HealthMap system (http://www.healthmap.org/en) and photos can be uploaded for inclusion with reports.

The app is currently available for download, free of charge, from the Apple app store using your device or iTunes on your computer. For further recommendations of useful health-related apps, please see the “Handheld Info” tab on the Libraries’ Public Health guide (http://libguides.library.dal.ca/publichealth). General information on tracking the H1N1 virus can also be found on the main page of the guide.