3 Round Stones' co-founder Bernadette Hyland discusses a new mobile application that uses federal open government data about weather and healthcare to improve management of chronic health conditions including asthma and COPD.

1. Weather Health Explorer
Linking Environmental Data for
Personal Health Delivery
3-October-2012
Presenter: Bernadette Hyland
Email. bhyland@3roundstones.com
Twitter: @BernHyland
This presentation: http://slideshare.net/3roundstones
Today I’d like to introduce you to an exciting Web app emerging as a result of
government open data efforts and industry valuing trusted authoritative content
from the Web. Gov’t agencies, like NOAA, HHS, NLM/NIH and US EPA, are
authoritative sources for important data sets. We, as taxpayers, have collectively
paid millions for gov’t to collect, curate and disseminate this information that
often is NOT very accessible and rarely published in format that is re-usable by
others.

2. Our customers
US Environmental Health &
Protection Human
Agency Services
Government
Printing Office
World Wide Web
Consortium
Our customers.... I co-chair the W3C Government Linked Data Working Group
and support Open Government Data initiatives focusing on data exchange
standards and best practices used by the HCLS communities. I’m also co-
founder & CEO of 3 Round Stones, a commercial open source data platform
company.

3. Google Generation ...
Empowered
“Let patients help!”
- Dave deBronkart
3
Today we live in the Google Generation. We can research anything. 10% of American’s
use online tools and apps like iTriage to evaluate symptoms, learn about possible causes,
find medical facilities or record prescriptions.

4. The catalyst ...
• The Web, of course ...
• Open data from trusted
authoritative sources
• Open Source software
• Global data exchange
standards
Over the last decade, medical practitioners have observed how the Web has impacted
how patients interact with them; participate in online communities like ACOR.org, the
Association of Cancer Online Resources. ACOR is a collection of online cancer
communities who provide timely and accurate information to those affected by cancer
and related disorders. When Dave deBronkart learned he had a rare and terminal
cancer, he turned to a group of fellow patients online -- and found the medical treatment
that saved his life. He calls on all patients to talk with one another, know their own
health data, and make health care better one e-Patient at a time. His mantra is “Let
Patients Help”.

5. Big data ecosystem includes
complex data
That of course has to be balanced. There is a ton of information on the Web ... not all of it is good,
accurate or should be trusted.
We, patients, providers, healthcare IT vendors and government, all find ourselves in a big data
ecosystem, seeking information from trusted sources. The Web of Data provides fertile soil for
economic growth to transform how we do personalized health delivery, including integrating
mobile computing devices. As Dr. Fernando Martinez from Beacon Partners suggested yesterday,
there are “double-edged aspects” of mHealth. There are security aspects related to managing non-
corporate owned devices that need to be addressed, however, there is no turning back the fact that
patients are becoming more empowered and healthcare professionals must keep up.

6. Improving health delivery ...
• Harness larger & more complex datasets to
evaluate the potential for health impacts
• More accurately predict factors that
contribute to illness or diagnose disease
We are already seeing signs of the things to come.
Healthcare analytics and BI solutions providers harnessing larger and more
complex data sets are looking to incorporate Open Data too.
Health delivery companies like Sentara and Partners Healthcare are producing
mobile apps for the public good.
They’re gaining expertise with the new distributed data landscape and how
patients are becoming central to their care.

7. CDC Open Linked Data DBpedia
Census Government Cloud Pub Med
Data Ontology
Clinical
NLM
Business US EPA
Ontology Internal
Social Portal
Media Data Physicians
Facebook
Twitter EMR Services
Data Locations
Clinical Condition Specific
Sentara Healthcare, a VA-based non-profit health delivery company with 400K
insured lives, are interested in the intersection of Open Government Data +
Linked Data cloud + internal content.

8. Conceptual Model
Pa$ents
with
chronic
pulmonary
disease
that
are
educated
and
no$fied
of
adverse
environmental,
weather,
and
geographic
condi$ons
are
.
.
.
be#er
able
to
respond
and
proac/vely
manage
their
condi/on.
Working with Sentara Healthcare, we developed a conceptual model. Nearly
130 million Americans, that is nearly one in two, suffer from at least one chronic
medical condition such as COPD, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, stroke and
high blood pressure. Chronic conditions account for 70% utilization of medical
services and costs in the US. Our initial conceptual model started earlier this
year focusing on Asthma and COPD.
Our initial focus for a Web and mobile app is on patients with chronic pulmonary
disease and educating them on adverse effects of the environment.

9. Methodology
1. Defined target population and clinical data from EMR
2. Identified sources of open government data
3. Leveraged trusted, authoritative Open Government
Data (environmental, weather, drugs)
4. Alert patient of possible hazardous conditions and
recommend appropriate actions
Describe methodology.
We combine open content from US EPA, NOAA, NLM/NIH, PubMed, Medline
to support patient education.
3RS created a Web application linking 4 government data sets daily & user
entered info on asthma and COPD. The project is called “Weather Health
Explorer.”

10. Value Proposition
• Decrease costly
Emergency
Department
visits
• Reduce
hospital
re-­‐admissions
a>er
treatment
• Improve self-­‐care
and
medica$on
compliance
• Awareness
of
triggers
and
disease
management

11. Weather Health Explorer
EPA EPA
NOAA UV
AQS
NIH NIH
User
11
Because studies show that people turn to authoritative sources on the Web for information on their
health conditions, as often as 50% of the time healthcare is researched via the Web. Here is a
screen grab of the actual Web application.
Weather Health Explorer uses open government data from NIH for drug warnings & imprint data;
from NOAA for precipitation data, max/min temperature, humidity and thunderstorms; EPA Air
Quality.
Weather Health Explorer serves to warn patients of drug interactions or advising them on dosage.
We’ve incorporated pill identification using imprint data. This application was built using
Callimachus, an open source data platform based on international data exchange standards.

12. Iterative Approach
• POC May 2012 (60 day sprint) EPA Air Quality &
PubMed
• Feedback - Demonstrated at Health Datapalooza,
Washington DC (June 2012), patients, clinicians
• Phase I - Dec 2012 - Available for general public
• Phase II - 2013 - Combine with EMR (anonymized)
Multiple speakers yesterday including Rob Havasy, Larry Stuntz, and Dr.
Martinez described the importance of doing a phased approach, soliciting
feedback, pivoting rapidly. We adhere to the “Lean Startup model” promoted by
Eric Ries, the entrepreneur, technology advisor and best-selling author of the
popular blog “Startup Lesson Learned” & Lean Startup, a book that is
revolutionizing software development.

13. This was our POC that we showed at the Healthcare Datapalooza in DC in June.
We took feedback and iterated the Web application. Sentara continues to get
feedback and is looking for corporate support to continue development and make
this available on both their corporate website and as a mobile application.
Something very powerful about this story is that Sentara, a non-profit healthcare
company believes apps like this are a “national good” and should be made
available for people who want to be more responsible & accountable for
managing chronic conditions.

14. Securely hosted
on the cloud
Off-s
S
n
M
/S ns
atio
notifications
Email/SMS
ail atio
ite b
Em tific
istr
no
a
min
cku
Ad
ps
Monitoring Service
Application-level
monitoring
l
ve SNS
-le
m ring
ste ito
Sy on
m
Callimachus
(application)
Additional attached Periodic snapshots
storage (backup)
EBS - 50 GB S3 - 50 GB
M2.2XLarge
HTTP/HTTPS
Public users
• Created using an Open Source linked data management system, Callimachus
• Developers can combine data sources & quickly build a web UI for Web
or mobile devices
• Hosted on the cloud
• Web scale

15. Web scale
• Leverages user supplied information & federal
government data
• Created using an Open Source linked data
management system, Callimachus
• Developers can combine data sources & quickly build a
web UI for Web or mobile devices
• Hosted on the cloud
• Web scale

16. Report card for
Weather Health Explorer
Linking Environmental Data for Personal Health Delivery
✓ Federal government data - EPA, NOAA, NIH - 25/25
✓ Creativity/innovation/originality - 24/25
✓ Patient empowerment / engagement - 20/20
✓ Usefulness to the public - 20/20
✓ Scalability - 10/10
Total = 99 points
Weather Health Explorer meets all the criteria set forth for the New England
Health Datapalooza Competition. Since it is early and I’m going first, I thought
I’d help with the scoring :-)

17. What is around the corner ...
• Authorities publishing data in machine &
human readable formats for improved access &
re-use
• Weather, human health and scientific
research ...
• Health Datapalooza 2013 will have a Linked
Data track
• Apps Challenges, hack-a-thons, funding ($1M-
$200M)
What’s next? We are already seeing signs of the things to come.
Data on the Web is going mainstream
There have been many well-publicized triple challenges, hack-a-thons, apps challenges
-- they are popping up everywhere.

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