Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain
the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in
Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles
and JavaScript.
A small group of epidemiologists is abandoning pen and paper for digital maps with multiple dimensions to track infectious disease outbreaks. Alan Dove takes stock of a field in transition.