Aside from the detection of newly circulating infections, there may be many additional benefits from monitoring absence and symptom reports of hospital staff. These data may be used to identify patterns of absence and their cause, highlight problem areas, provide transparency, pinpoint areas where infection control procedures break down and prevent sickness consequentially reducing costs. In the UK, sick leave currently costs the National Health Service (NHS) 10.3 million working days and £1.7 billion per year, with higher rates than anywhere else in the public or private sector [14] . Cutting sick leave even by a fraction could save the NHS millions of pounds, and may be achieved by increased vigilance and encouragement for symptomatic staff to stay home, reducing the spread of infection. Further, reducing the spread of infection will decrease the risk of the need to close wards which incurs huge opportunity costs for elective procedures as well as significant financial losses [21] .