Feel like you’re coming down with something? Have you shared your condition on the nearest social media platform? If so, there’s a good chance the latest mHealth initiative from the people at Sickweather is tracking your symptoms and warning your immediate social networking pals to stay away until the sniffles – or worse – pass.

In short, start-up Sickweather is looking to socialize sickness. That is, social media junkies may soon be able to enjoy a groundbreaking service that monitors illnesses within a user’s closest circle of friends. The goal, ostensibly, is to mitigate exposure risks and to possibly even forecast likely outbreaks of the bugs wreaking havoc during cold and flu season.

Likened to the way Doppler radar scans the skies for indicators of bad weather, Sickweather “scans social networks for indicators of illness,” allowing users to check for the chance of sickness as easily as they check for the chance of inclement weather.

With more and more people turning to outlets like Facebook and Twitter to update their friends and followers as to when they get sick, there is now an immense amount of real time data available on the health of our population. Sickweather’s robust algorithm filters and qualifies this data from several public sources (including its own online community) and cross references them with location tags to produce real time “weather maps” of reported symptoms. This information is then used to forecast the movement of everything from stomach bugs to chronic illness and other sickness, including depression.

Graham Dodge, CEO of Sickweather, believes one’s immediate social circle has more to do with the spread of illness than most people realize. “Maybe I won’t take my kids to that birthday party,” Dodge says, referencing one of the many ways in which users can assess whether they should venture into certain gatherings where known sick people are presently dwelling.

Although the system remains in beta phase today, trial usage rooted in key terms like “bronchitis,” “pneumonia,” and “pertussis” are yielding effective warning signs across the platform, says Dodge. “It was eye-opening to see how much data we got just from specific technical terms,” Dodge admits.

So will Sickweather prove contagious among social media users? Dodge thinks so. He and his team will continue fine-tuning the service in hopes of it becoming the next major phenomenon in mHealth. And, in the meantime, Sickweather will continue searching for advertising partnerships to generate revenue and keep the project afloat.