GlaxoSmithKline is sponsoring a new Android mobile app aims to raise awareness, educate users and collect health outcomes data.
Flumoji was developed by MIT Connection Science, a cross-discipline group from the US Institute, and is being positioned as a ‘health wizard’.
“Tell it how you feel and it will magically learn how to help protect you from flu and other ailments,” as MIT’s description of the app puts it.
Detailed information on how user data will be collected and put to work is not apparent and this lack of transparency, along with the app’s multiple purposes, could hold it back.
We have something better to spread than the #flu. Check out the #Flumoji app for Android™, designed by @MIT: https://t.co/klknxNLLZC pic.twitter.com/G3diNqO5bS
— GSK US (@GSKUS) December 20, 2016
Nevertheless, GSK hopes Flumoji will ‘go viral’, as users share the free app online and watch it spread to friends and friends-of-friends, something they can then keep track of a ‘Flumoji Spreaders’ leaderboard.
Hopefully the app will prove more shareable than the firm’s #Flumoji hashtag, which has been used just six times on Twitter to date, with five tweets from GSK and one from an industry observer.
