KIRKLAND, Wash. - A Seattle-area start-up company is at the forefront of tracking the swine flu outbreak. Company officials at the private disease tracking company Veratect say they detected it 18 days before the World Health Organization posted its warnings.
"Before word hit the mainstream media or the blogosphere, Kirkland-based Veratect was notifying state and federal health officials that a problem was brewing," said a company statement.
Using its artificial intelligence and global network of multilingual analysts, Veratect detected the first indications of the influenza outbreak in Mexico at the end of March, according to company officals.
"As such, it was the first to alert the Emergency Operations Center and Global Disease Detection Center at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention," said Veratect CEO Bob Hart. It also passed the information on to health officials in Colorado, Nevada and Washington state.
Hart compares Veratect's 24/7 disease tracking system, which includes 30 professionals in operations centers in Kirkland and Arlington, Virginia, to a fire lookout.
"(We) allow our customers to react to the first wisps of smoke rather than only being about to respond to a fully involved forest fire," he said.
At Veratect, Hart said, his entire team is monitoring the situation. It is in frequent contact with health and public safety groups.
"We do think that this is an extremely serious event and the rapid spread illustrating the global risk of infectious disease," added Hart.
Veratect is making updates available via Twitter at
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