The website, which launched in November, mines social networking sites using a computer algorithm, and is able to tease illness trends out of a sea of social media-data.

But for the past year, he and his partners have been nursing the startup dream with Sickweather, a site that aims to provide consumers with real-time information about illness trends in their communities across the country. The team is currently looking for early stage investors, but have already gotten media attention in the United States and England.

The site could be a boon to health care providers and pharmaceutical companies, who can use it to advertise their products and services to a highly targeted audience: sick people who want to feel better as quickly as possible.