Story
the lightbulb moment
The concept of DailyBreath was originally inspired during a conversation between the founder and CEO and his sister who has rheumatoid arthritis (RA). One morning, she exclaimed, while suffering from RA symptoms, “you should develop a mobile app that would tell me when the weather is changing and may cause my RA to flare-up.” Inspired by this interchange and recognizing that environmental factors have been long neglected by the medical community when it comes to personalized health, he developed the HEALTHeWeather Intelligence Platform, which consists of incoming weather and environmental data, a calculated evidence-based risk index for specific conditions based on the confluence of these exposures, along with a summary of impacts and daily recommendations. Being able to understand the factors that make life more challenging for people with health conditions impacted by the weather and the environment became his mission.
Because the causal effect of the weather and the environment on asthma was most readily apparent, as well as asthma attacks a significant burden on patients and the healthcare system, the founder dove into researching ways to help avoid potentially negative health outcomes by transforming the distributed public health model for tracking exposures generally into a personalized, respiratory learning and warning system based on each patient’s individual susceptibility to exposures. Along this path, the need for vulnerable populations to become weather informed, location aware, and health prepared became apparent and he envisioned DailyBreath as an app that would inform people of environmental conditions in their community, much like traffic apps identify where traffic is worst.
A SPARK of passion: PINPOINT TRIGGERS
I became passionately inspired in a mission to help even one asthma sufferer avoid an asthma attack and breathe easier when I happened upon an article about a young girl with asthma from Nebraska. This young 15-year old was on vacation with her family visiting an amusement park in nearby Iowa. After a day at the park in hot, humid weather, with poor air quality (a mix of pollutants including fertilizers and pesticides from agricultural fields nearby), she came back to a hotel and following dinner went down to the hotel pool. The chlorine in the pool irritated her airways and she had breathing difficulty so severe that she stopped breathing. Unfortunately, the consequences were severe as she was unconscious for 20 minutes. She is a paraplegic as a result of this incident.
What bothered Eric was the headline of the article, “Doctors can’t pinpoint what triggered 15-year-old’s asthma attack: Burke High junior remains in ICU.” On an emotional level, the nonchalance of the headline ‘just made me mad.’ This girl’s life and that of those around her is traumatically changed forever. It struck me that trying to pinpoint the cause after a traumatic event was the wrong approach. We needed to pinpoint the trigger risks and avoid the asthma attacks.
While following a link to a GoFundMe account for this young girl, I decided to type in ‘Asthma Tragedy’ on the GoFundMe site and I was stunned to get hundreds of hits, GoFundMe campaigns for those with asthma or a loved one with asthma who had experienced an attack and were seeking support for medical expenses. Tragically, many were requesting funeral expenses.
It’s a health system failure that asthma patients accept having asthma attacks as a given, and multiple ER visits every year are common. With DailyBreath, we aim to help those with asthma to reduce the risk associated with potentially preventable asthma attacks. We will help them pinpoint triggers one symptom at a time. We hope to help even one life breathe easier.