January 28, 2018 – Asheville, NC – Allergic asthma impacts 17.7 million people, of which 8.1 million are children. The economic burden of asthma in the U.S. is approximately $82 billion annually. Every day in this country, there are 30,000 asthma attacks leading to 5,000 visits to the emergency room and 1,000 hospital stays. Eleven people die every day due to an asthma attack.
But thanks to a new collaboration between the StatWeather Institute, which provides state-of-the-art weather prediction systems, and HEALTHeWeather, a platform-as-a-service (PAAS) software company delivering personalized weather insights for better patient health, allergy and asthma sufferers, hospitals, physicians and other health professionals will have advanced notice of the most likely onset and intensity of the pollen allergy season for their region of the country.
StatWeather and HEALTHeWeather announce the two organizations’ first regional seasonal monitoring projection report using forecasts of up to six months ahead for the temperature- and precipitation-induced onset, intensity, and duration of pollen impacting those with spring allergies and allergy-induced asthma. This report introduces a bi-weekly subscription-based allergy projection dashboard product. Scheduled for release on Feb. 1 and accessible via login through the StatWeather Institute, the product is the first of its kind in giving medical practitioners and patients a long-range outlook of specific pollen outbreaks for planning.
It is widely reported by scientists that the onset of pollen allergy season is occurring earlier than normal due to warming temperatures, often with greater duration. Warm temperatures with increased precipitation is estimated to elevate pollination levels, thus releasing more pollen spores into the atmosphere. Recognizing that climate variability effects pollen presence and, hence, patients vulnerable to allergies and asthma, this effort is the first predictive system that dynamically adjusts its projections based upon actual weather in a machine learning environment.
“These regional projections raise awareness of risk for when symptoms may appear, preparing sufferers to take steps to lessen the severity of those symptoms to prevent severe attacks,” said Eric Klos, CEO of HEALTHeWeather. “This product is the perfect complement to our mobile app, DailyBreath, which helps support allergic asthma sufferers with the first daily trigger risk index based on the convergence of weather with pollution and, or pollen. Through seasonal monitoring of the allergy and asthma risk of pollen, we are providing early warning of pollen onset, identifying potential intensity, and estimating the duration of the pollen allergy season for our DailyBreath community.”
Allergistic, a first-of-its-kind mobile app tailored to helping deliver a smooth daily workflow for allergists and their patients, is providing ongoing allergy expertise to the effort.
StatWeather Institute CEO Ria Persad said, “We are pleased to take on the challenge of projecting the impact of pollen presence affecting respiratory health based upon StatWeather’s award-winning, long-range weather and climate forecasting models. Our models are based upon 130 years of historical data from NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information and provide a probabilistic framework to compute risk for extreme conditions.”
This collaboration originated at last November’s inaugural Climate and Respiratory Health Workshop held at The Collider in Asheville, North Carolina, by CASE Consultants International, a consultancy mainstreaming climate science for practical results. Both HEALTHeWeather and StatWeather Institute are members of The Collider, a nonprofit innovation center focused on catalyzing climate solutions.
“This is exactly the kind of collaboration we sought when we founded the StatWeather Institute in Asheville as part of our engagement with The Collider,” said Persad. “This is the first of many collaborations in public health that we envision to leverage our data and forecasting models to benefit constituencies impacted by climate risks.”
To download a sample report, go to www.statweather.com/health.
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About StatWeather: As a social enterprise, StatWeather, Inc., was founded in 2009 to solve some of the world’s toughest problems in long-range weather and climate prediction. Using state-of-art proprietary artificial intelligence technologies, StatWeather has pioneered a purely data-driven, statistical approach to weather and climate modeling which is used globally within the energy, commodities, climate risk, and public health sectors. The StatWeather Institute is a non-profit organization that utilizes the StatWeather technology in the development of products for the public benefit. For more information, go to www.statweather.com.
About HEALTHeWeather: HEALTHeWeather is a platform-as-a-service software (PAAS) software company delivering personalized weather insights for better patient health. DailyBreath is a service delivered via a mobile app that helps asthma patients experience more symptom-free days and avoid asthma attacks by making them location aware, weather informed, and health prepared. It provides a patent-pending evidence-based DailyBreath Risk Index developed in conjunction with Asheville-based CASE Consultants International. It’s available for free in the Apple iTunes Store. Text ‘DBnow’ to 41411 to download the app. More information is available at www.healtheweather.com.
About The Collider: The Collider is a nonprofit innovation center focused on solutions and services for a changing climate. Located in the heart of downtown “Climate City,” Asheville, N.C., The Collider offers cowork, business, and event space in addition to providing memberships, education, internships, sponsorships, and public opportunities to “collide.” In March 2018 The Collider is spearheading a new conference on the business of climate, ClimateCon 2018, aiming to address the opportunities for innovative solutions for climate change. StatWeather’s Ria Persad is among the speakers. More info on The Collider is available at thecollider.org. Follow The Collider on Facebook (@TheCollider.Asheville) and on Twitter and Instagram (@TheCollider.AVL).
MEDIA CONTACTS
Ria Persad, CEO, StatWeather Institute, 941-799-7911, rpersad@statweather.com [photo attached]
Eric J. Klos, CEO, HEALTHeWeather, 703-403-9618, eric@healtheweather.com [photo attached]
Kathi Petersen, Director of Communications, The Collider, 828-712-1286, kpetersen@thecollider.org