10 Essential Apps That Take the Guess Work Out of Illness

The next time your old standbys—chicken soup, decongestant and ginger ale—don't cut it on a sick day, download one of these.

By Kipp Jarecke-Cheng April 26, 2017

With the ever-increasing complexities of the healthcare system, the adage that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure rings truer today than ever before. Caring for sick kids can be complicated, but a new batch of family-focused and user-friendly apps aims to help parents and caregivers provide appropriate health care with confidence. Flip through our slideshow of some of the most useful apps to help care for little patients.

Sickweather

Every parent knows that illnesses—from the common cold to nasty stomach viruses—always strike in clusters. Wouldn’t it be great to have a forecasting app that could predict the likelihood of a malady hitting your area? That’s the genius behind Sickweather, a practical app that uses a patent-pending social listening algorithm to determine whether a bug is headed your way. Processing more than 6 million crowdsourced reports of illness each month, Sickweather can alert parents about more than two dozen illnesses, including flu, pinkeye and norovirus. The Apple Watch version of the app has a handy hand washing timer that uses Apple's Taptic Engine to let you know when you’re done and germs are washed away.

Available for iOS and Android, Free.

What are your favorite apps to help manage your family’s health and wellness? Tell us in the comments below!

— Kipp Jarecke-Cheng