Text Illness Monitoring (TIM)

Text Illness Monitoring, or TIM, is a CDC-funded, text messaging platform which helps public health officials monitor symptoms during an infectious disease outbreak.

Text Illness Monitoring (TIM) logo

Traditionally, public health officials conducted symptom monitoring via telephone calls, which was a time-consuming process. Text Illness Monitoring (TIM) is a text messaging platform which allows for two-way short message service (SMS) text messaging to help public health organizations quickly identify enrolled volunteer participants self-reported symptoms.1, 2, 3 TIM can be used to monitor an organization’s workforce or other populations.

TIM is funded by CDC and is available to public health organizations at the Federal, State, Tribal, Local, and Territorial levels to assist with infectious disease outbreaks.

Since February 2020, TIM has been used by multiple agencies to monitor employees for possible symptoms related COVID-19, avian flu, mpox, measles, Ebola, and Marburg virus disease.

For questions, please contact TIMSupport@cdc.gov or to enroll please visit the Contact Us page.

Footnotes

1An Evaluation of the Text Illness Monitoring (TIM) Platform for COVID-19: Cross-sectional Online Survey of Public Health Users. Joseph H, Ingber S, Austin S, Westnedge S, Strona FV, Lee L, Shah A, Roper L, Patel A. JMIR Public Health Surveill. 2022 Feb 7;8(2):e32680. doi:10.2196/32680.

2Text-Based Illness Monitoring for Detection of Novel Influenza A Virus Infections During an Influenza A (H3N2)v Virus Outbreak in Michigan, 2016: Surveillance and Survey. Stewart R, Rossow J, Eckel S, Bidol S, Ballew G, Signs K, Conover JT, Burns E, Bresee JS, Fry AM, Olsen SJ, Biggerstaff M. JMIR Public Health Surveill 2019;5(2):e10842. doi: 10.2196/10842.

3The Check and Report Ebola (CARE+) program to monitor travelers for Ebola after arrival to the United States, 2014-2016. Joseph HA, Wojno AE, Winter K, Grady-Erickson O, Hawes E, Benenson GA, Lee A, Cetron M. Public Health Rep. 2019;134(6):592–598. doi: 10.1177/0033354919878165. http://europepmc.org/abstract/MED/31600452.