Facebook’s new timeline based profile included a new option to update your Facebook profile with Health and Wellness Life Events. This new option is a cool idea and something fun to play with as we continue to document our lives online. I find it appealing to actually put (for example) on November 4 2008 I had the flu and mark that as a sickness rather than have that jumbled in with all my other status updates. The value returned back to me to sort through my life by Health and Wellness Life Events such as getting sick, losing weight, breaking a finger is astonishing to me.

This seems profound in its own right and I also see that this can build into a solid business for Facebook into how we document the spread of disease, likelihood of someone getting sick, and how much one’s insurance will be. Not all of these are specific to the new Health and Wellness Life Events but all can now be better assessed via Facebook’s new data inputs. I will write about each of these topics over the course of four posts: 1) the spread of disease, 2)likelihood of someone getting sick, 3)how much someone’s insurance will be, and 4)how this can be a business for Facebook. First, the spread of disease.

Google claimed a lot of fame for their Google.org Flu Trends which “uses aggregated Google search data to estimate flu activity.” The assumption here is that Google is able to monitor searches that are flu related and when an abnormal influx of those searches happen in one area, flu is likely to break out or is occurring there. Remarkable feat, bar none.

When we look around the corner at Facebook’s Health and Wellness Life Events this adds a new dimension in our ability to monitor flu or other disease outbreaks. Google’s approach is great in solving where the flu is occurring and can work with authorities to quarantine or alert that area. What Google does not know is who has the flu and if there is a unique relationship between those people. If people begin documenting their life with Facebook’s Health and Wellness tools, authorities will not only be able to tell where people are getting sick but will be able to analyze who is getting sick, what relationships these people have with each other, and based upon a person’s social graph and check-in history the likelihood of their friends getting sick or already having infected.

A system of information like this would not only help authorities figure out who may be sick or will be sick but could advance into a notification system that could save people from coming across a disease. A smart enough system could alert people that a high influx of people in their social graph has recently come down with the flu, “start taking Dayquil”. A bit futuristic and probably years out but I don’t believe improbable.

The most fascinating piece about all of this is that this information will not be inputted via a government mandated form or from your doctor – this information will be submitted by people on their behalf. The value of communicating with your contacts that you are sick and being able to reference that information years later may be a strong enough value proposition to get people to enter this information themselves.

My next post will cover more in-depth on how this information can be used to determine the likelihood of someone getting sick.