About Text Illness Monitoring (TIM)

What to know

Text Illness Monitoring (TIM) is a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)-funded, text messaging platform. TIM helps public health officials monitor symptoms during an infectious disease outbreak.

Text Illness Monitoring System logo. Text displaying "TIM" acronym is displayed with image of text box and medical symbol.

Overview

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 text messaging. This helps 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. It is available to public health organizations at the Federal, State, Tribal, Local, and Territorial levels. TIM is used to assist with infectious disease outbreaks.

Since February 2020, TIM has been used by multiple agencies to monitor employees for possible symptoms. It has been used for 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.

Features

TIM includes many features to help monitor enrolled participants. Organizations using TIM can:

  • Participants can enroll with a keyword or administrators can add them.
  • Users can customize text messages or monitoring periods.
  • Dashboard features provide summary information on participant status.
  • Jurisdictions can track alerts4.
  • TIM can be used with domestic and international phone numbers.
  • Ad hoc "blast" messages can be sent to all active participants.
  • Text messages can be adapted for multiple languages.

For more information, please contact us at timsupport@cdc.gov.

Print
Content Source:
; About Text Illness Monitoring (TIM); National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases (NCIRD)
  • 1) An 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.
  • 2) Text-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.
  • 3) The 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.
  • 4) Enrolled participants receive one or more text messages each day asking if they have symptoms consistent with an infectious disease outbreak currently under investigation. Jurisdictions are immediately alerted when a participant responds YES or when a participant fails to respond to message reminders. A dashboard feature allows jurisdictions to easily identify and follow up with individuals who are reporting symptoms or those who have been unresponsive.