Exposure Health — A New Power Model
May 4th, 2018 — Asheville, NC — Not being a climatologist, meteorologist, or environmental health specialist is a challenge when you are trying to raise awareness of the exposure impacts of the weather and the environment on health. However, that’s because the model for the distribution of weather and environmental knowledge and information is based on old power. We have a system that distributes weather and environmental exposure information to the masses when in fact individuals are sensitive to these exposures uniquely.
Our physician-centered healthcare system runs on old power. In New Power, by Jeremy Heimans and Henry Timms, they explain;
“Physicians have become accustomed to being keepers of medical knowledge, distanced from their patients by a hyphenated lexicon and inscrutable prescriptions.”
In the case of environmental factors, if physicians did not understand the impacts of outdoor weather or environmental exposures on an asthma patient, or they felt the correlation was insufficiently validated, it was neglected. Asthma educators arose, in part, because physicians were not sufficiently educating patients about the triggers that could cause negative health outcomes. This is in part because we lacked the infrastructure that is emerging today; wearable sensors, big data, and machine learning that could inform physicians of the exposure impacts on their patient.
Heimans and Timms further explain;
“Patients are slowly discovering new power. They are acting to improve their own health conditions, surrounded — and rallied — by a crowd of like-minded people. They try things out, swap journal articles., and track each other’s progress. They share their data, ideas, and compassion.”
What if an asthma warning system was built on new power, the power of the asthma patient. In this scenario, they would seek to understand the daily outdoor conditions based on their unique sensitivity. The patients’ capacity to understand and act against the triggers that impact them is becoming greater through wearable sensors, more widely available and distributed air quality and pollen monitors, GIS big data, machine learning, mobile and web technology, and voice assistants.
By sharing flare-up data, asthma patients can contribute to a community-wide learning system for triggers that will inform asthma patients, collectively and individually, of the risks associated with weather converging with air pollution and pollen where they live, work, and play so that they can all avoid asthma attacks. DailyBreath offers this system and represents ‘patients empowered’. Download from the App Store by texting ‘DBNOW’ to 41411 to start this journey in patient empowerment. May the 4th be with you during National Asthma Awareness Month and always.
Authored by Eric Klos, CEO, HEALTHeWeather, and innovator of DailyBreath, which helps others avoid asthma attacks. If you suffer from allergies or asthma, or are a caregiver of one who does, please TEXT ‘dbnow’ to 41411 to download DailyBreath from the Apple iTunes App store. If you are an Android user, sign up here to receive the Android version when it becomes available in the future.
