Dr. Dan Janies leads a team a researchers at the Ohio State University Medical Center who are mapping the disease using Google Earth, 10TV's Lindsey Seavert reported.

SPECIAL SECTION: H1N1 Outbreak

Seeing where the virus has traveled will help doctors determine where it will show up next.

"We would like to move essentially towards weather maps for infectious disease and see what diseases are circulating in your areas, where they are coming from, what animals are carrying them as well," Janies told 10TV News.

Predicting H1N1 hotspots would not be possible were it not for Ohio's Supercomputer Center, hidden at a secure location. The supercomputer is like your PC on steroids, a machine ten thousand times more powerful than your computer at home.

The supercomputer allows Janies to crunch data on how the virus has mutated in order to track its movement throughout the world, and from species to species.

Janies' team also tracks when strains of the virus become drug-resistant.

The hope is that the supercomputer could help slow the spread of future outbreaks.

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