HIMSS, a national health it conference, is gathering this week in Las Vegas and attendees may observe outside a haze from wildfire smoke dispersed from wildfires in multiple Western states. With a plethora of extreme weather events occurring in greater preponderance because of climate change, it’s becoming increasingly clear that we need to translate weather and environmental data into environmental health awareness that alleviates negative health outcomes. Being environmentally health aware daily is becoming an imperative in our changing climate, but also when extreme weather events have downstream (‘downwind’) impacts. It’s time we integrate environmental health awareness into every fabric of public health and local health care delivery.
· Imagine if there was an emergency event like wildfires that might have a smoke impact on your community and your public health department or local health system could reach at risk individuals in your community to inform them of the presence of wildfire smoke at unhealthy levels.
· Imagine if our electronic health records had weather and environmental data integrated into the patient health record so that when a patient presented in the ER or for an inpatient hospital stay, the weather and environmental variables currently, and retrospectively for the past day, past three days, or the past week, were represented in the patient record. Perhaps then clinicians would be able to correlate the impact of environmental exposures and the patient’s condition.
· Imagine if there was an interface that could be integrated with digital health solutions that alerted a patient of a weather and environmental variable threshold that presented a higher level of risk for the patient based on their condition and individual sensitivity to a specific exposure. (DailyBreath vison)
In a changing climate where these environmental factors are going to have an increasing impact on our health and wellness, this is the type of integration that is needed for our health care system broadly to be responsive to these increasingly prevalent health threats.