Help is a company founded in 2008, intended to cut through the jargon and impenetrable formulations of highly branded pharmaceuticals, and to provide customers with simple and easily understood products, like Help, I Have A Headache, which is 100% acetaminophen and no other drugs, or Help, I’ve Cut Myself, which is high-grade but low-cost bandages like the ones used in hospitals.

One of their newest offerings is a free Facebook app called Help, I Have The Flu. This tool will analyze your Facebook friends, looking for mentions of coughing, sneezing, or the F-word, and will offer up a suggestion of who might have passed the bug along to you.

Obviously, the app is tongue in cheek, but suggests serious opportunities for discovery of real epidemics, either medical ones or the spread of infectious ideas in the business or societal setting. What business leader wouldn’t want to know who was the first staffer to start talking about a competitor’s new release, or whose social media comments lead to the highest number of contacts seeking work with the company?

I think the company is extremely hip:

Help Remedies’s Hip Pharma – Businessweek

Help’s branding relies heavily on humor. “If you try to maintain a tone of science and seriousness, it’s really alienating,” says Frank. On the back of Help’s nausea medicine, the package jokes about how the pills are flavorless: “We were going to make them deviled-egg flavor, but then we thought it might defeat the purpose.” There are dozens of mock problems on their website, such as Help: I am Worried About My Penis Size, Help: I’m Racist, or Help: I Want My Cat to Be a Cover Model, each of which links to a tongue-in-cheek solution.