Protect your health from climate change with Mediclim

Can a weather report protect your health from climate change, or more specifically avoid a medical emergency caused by an exacerbation of your chronic condition? In the case of the medical reminder service Mediclim, it appears that the answer is yes.

But first lets define what we mean by climate change. There's the long term, global phenomenon, much discussed here at Justmeans and elsewhere in the context of potential human contributions, especially in the form of carbon footprint. But then there's another sense of climate change related to the way we live: Increased urbanization, living close to roadways and other sources of air pollution, even the increased planting of pollen-producing decorative landscapes. These are changes in the "personal" micro-climates we inhabit. This may be a technically incorrect usage of the term climate, but has real consequences that cannot be ignored, in much the same way that "environment" increasingly refers to the built environment as well as flora and fauna, mountains and valleys. And of course there are more normal fluctuations of the weather in local regions (increased humidity, wind shifts, etc..).

All of these can spell health disaster for folk suffering from certain, weather exacerbated conditions, such as asthma, COPD, heart disease, migraines, and diabetes. In those cases, wouldn't it be handy for to receive an alert when the weather forecast calls for conditions prone to trigger your condition? That's exactly what Mediclim does, sending subscribers an average of about 3-5 emails per month per condition to alert them of potentially harmful weather conditions. They are a free service available in the US, Canada, UK, and France (in English and French, with Spanish on the roadmap). To date they've issued about 3-million mails, and are looking to a future when they enter the mhealth world of SMS text alerts as well.

"The essence of our public health endeavour, which we've been working on since 1986, is that Mediclim Health Forecasts are part of a new ehealth way of improving compliance in patients with chronic disease," says Dr. John Bart, a clinician who co-founded Mediclim with meteorologist Denis Bourque. "The literature talks about schemes based on phone reminders that are mostly short term attempts at improving compliance. Mediclim is different in that we're an indefinite reminder, pre-accepted by patients, which automatically improves adherence."

What do their users think? "We did a survey of our patients about six months in and we found that 70% of those who replied said that we made them feel more confident/in charge of their chronic illness-we helped empower them in other words- 60% said they managed their medications better because of the reminders, and 50% said that they were closer to their physician because of the Forecasts. That was better than we hoped." Says Bart. Plus, they "have an unsign rate of <3% so we can reasonably assume we are having an effect."

Independent evidence supports Mediclim's belief in the power of weather alerts as a powerful public health intervention. Research in the UK found that a program that enrolled 8,000 COPD patients was able to reduce hospitalizations by 22% over a six-month period with only four telephoned weather alerts.

As we lean increasingly on technologies, whether for the provision of formal home health, or patchwork, consumer opt-in mhealth and ehealth solutions, high value services like Mediclim have the potentially to be meaningful leverage points to beneficially bend the value curve of health care.

Imagine your own ehealth "dashboard," with a menu of apps supporting personal health promotion and disease management, accessible with your mobile device, laptop, and iPad/tablet. Can you imagine having Mediclim on your dashboard? What other health support would you want?

And if you are a health care provider, would you ever prescribe mhealth services such as Mediclim to your patients?

Photo credit: www.mediclim.com