We had the recent privilege of sitting down with digital health expert Eric Klos, the innovator behind the asthma health app, DailyBreath. We’ve pulled out some highlights for you!
DailyBreath Explain the Motivation behind their Asthma App
In the below segment, Eric explains how his sister’s rheumatoid arthritis flare ups led him to an ‘a-ha’ moment – as he realized the direct impact of the environment.
This realization led him to understand that environmental factors had been long neglected by the medical community in the treatment of chronic respiratory disorders:
DailyBreath Realize Environmental Insights are the Missing Link
As Eric dove deep into his research he found that even though the general asthmatic population understood the environmental impact on their symptoms, formal trigger management systems were often lacking when it came to treatment.
The absence of environmental intelligence meant that experts were often left wondering about the cause of a particular case of asthma exacerbation. With the right intelligence, they could have helped prevent an attack when the symptoms first appeared – or even earlier.
Eric also came to understand the reality that each asthma patient was completely different. In terms of symptom onset, trigger exacerbation, condition management and more. Our environmental exposure is personal and our experiences our personal, so the treatment solutions should be personal too – thus DailyBreath was born.
Some of the challenges Klos had to seek answers for during the process of building an asthma app that factored environmental intelligence included:
- How do you leverage environmental insights (Pollen, Air Quality) when so many data sources are not granular enough or real time?
- How do you personalize what has traditionally been public health, and create an exposure footprint at the individual and community levels?
In the below snippet Eric explains in his own words, how he found solutions and overcame these challenges. The end result is a personalized asthma management solution and risk factor based on the convergence of different environmental exposure factors:
What’s Next from Daily Breath & What Can We Learn from Their Story?
Eric Klos’ story is not entirely unique – many professionals in the digital health space are looking to innovative data and technology to develop better chronic disease management solutions.
However, what is interesting about Eric’s journey is how he started from the point of considering the elements that would empower patients to say “Hey, I can manage this condition”. Essentially, Eric worked backwards in his approach to healthcare product building.
In this final snippet, Eric describes how embedding the DailyBreath solution into the care process allowed him to further develop tools to help asthma sufferers track their symptoms and build a symptom/sensitivity map. He’s working towards introducing these solutions at both the local and community level.
Are Allergy Seasons Getting Harder to Predict?
There’s no single definition for when ‘pollen season’ starts or ends, because the pollen count where you are depends upon your exact location and the changing conditions there.
However, climate change is making things even more complicated. We discussed this in more detail in this webinar.
