Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Exploiting the Relation Between Environmental Factors and Diseases: A Case Study on Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Knowledge Representation for Health Care (KR4HC 2014)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 8903))

Abstract

The raise of chronic diseases poses a challenge for the health care sector worldwide. In many cases, diseases are affected by an environmental component that, until now, could be hardly controlled. However, with the recent advances in information and communication technologies applied to cities, it becomes possible to collect real-time environmental data and use them to provide chronic patients with recommendations able to adapt to the changing environmental conditions.

In this article, we study the use of the sensing capabilities of the so-called smart cities in the context of the recently proposed concept of Smart Health. In this context, we propose a way to exploit the relation between environmental factors and diseases, and we show how to obtain a comfort level for patients. Moreover, we study the application of our proposal to outdoor exercises and rehabilitative activities related to the treatment of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 34.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 44.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    This study is for children.

  2. 2.

    EU pollution scale (www.airqualitynow.eu) determines the pollution levels: very low (0–25), low (25–50), medium (50–75), high (75–100), and very high (\({>}\)100).

  3. 3.

    Borg scale [15] provides a scale of 10 values with 0 meaning no breathless at all, 10 maximal breathless, and values 2 and 7 representing slight breathlessness and very severe breathlessness, respectively.

References

  1. Agustí, A., Vestbo, J.: Current controversies and future perspectives in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Am. J. Respir. Crit. Care Med. 184(5), 507–513 (2012)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Anderson, G.B., Dominici, F., Wang, Y., McCormack, M.C., Bell, M.L., Peng, R.D.: Heat-related emergency hospitalizations for respiratory diseases in the medicare population. Am. J. Respir. Crit. Care Med. 187(10), 1098–1103 (2013)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Atkinson, R.W., Ross Anderson, H., Sunyer, J., Ayres, J., Baccini, M., Vonk, J.M., Boumghar, A., Forastiere, F., Forsberg, B., Touloumi, G., et al.: Acute effects of particulate air pollution on respiratory admissions: results from aphea 2 project. Am. J. Respir. Crit. Care Med. 164(10), 1860–1866 (2001)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Brunekreef, B., Hoek, G., Fischer, P., Spieksma, F.T.M.: Relation between airborne pollen concentrations and daily cardiovascular and respiratory-disease mortality. The Lancet 355(9214), 1517–1518 (2000)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Caragliu, A., del Bo, C., Nijkamp, P.: Smart cities in Europe. In: CERS’09, 3rd Central European Conference in Regional Science, pp. 45–59, October 2009

    Google Scholar 

  6. Crews, J.E., Campbell, V.A.: Vision impairment and hearing loss among community-dwelling older Americans: implications for health and functioning. Am. J. Public Health 94(5), 823 (2004)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Dales, R.E., Cakmak, S., Judek, S., Coates, F.: Tree pollen and hospitalization for asthma in urban Canada. Int. Arch. Allergy Immunol. 146(3), 241–247 (2008)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Darrow, L.A., Hess, J., Rogers, C.A., Tolbert, P.E., Klein, M., Sarnat, S.E.: Ambient pollen concentrations and emergency department visits for asthma and wheeze. Int. Arch. Allergy Immunol. 130(3), 630–638 (2012)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Dykewicz, M.S., Hamilos, D.L.: Rhinitis and sinusitis. Int. Arch. Allergy Immunol. 125(2), S103–S115 (2010)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Eysenbach, G.: What is e-health? J. Med. Internet Res. 3(2), e20 (2001)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Gan, W.Q., FitzGerald, J.M., Carlsten, C., Sadatsafavi, M., Brauer, M.: Associations of ambient air pollution with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease hospitalization and mortality. Am. J. Respir. Crit. Care Med. 187(7), 721–727 (2013)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Istepanian, R., Laxminarayan, S., Pattichis, C.S. (eds.): M-Health: Emerging Mobile Health Systems. Springer, Berlin (2006). ISBN 978-0-387-26558-2

    Google Scholar 

  13. Karakatsani, A., Analitis, A., Perifanou, D., Ayres, J.G., Harrison, R.M., Kotronarou, A., Kavouras, I.G., Pekkanen, J., Hämeri, K., Kos, G.P., et al.: Particulate matter air pollution and respiratory symptoms in individuals having either asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease: a European multicentre panel study. Environ. Health 11(1), 75 (2012)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. Kelsall, A., Decalmer, S., Webster, D., Brown, N., McGuinness, K., Woodcock, A., Smith, J.: How to quantify coughing: correlations with quality of life in chronic cough. Eur. Respir. J. 32(1), 175–179 (2008)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Kendrick, K.R., Baxi, S.C., Smith, R.M.: Usefulness of the modified 0–10 borg scale in assessing the degree of dyspnea in patients with copd and asthma. J. Emerg. Nurs. 26(3), 216–222 (2000)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. Li, S., Baker, P.J., Jalaludin, B.B., Guo, Y., Marks, G.B., Denison, L.S., Williams, G.M.: An Australian national panel study of diurnal temperature range and children’s respiratory health. Ann. Allergy Asthma Immunol. 112(4), 348–353 (2014)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. Pauwels, R.A., Buist, A.S., Calverley, P.M., Jenkins, C.R.: Global strategy for the diagnosis, management, and prevention of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Am. J. Respir. Crit. Care Med. 163(5), 1256–1276 (2012)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. Peacock, J.L., Anderson, H.R., Bremner, S.A., Marston, L., Seemungal, T.A., Strachan, D.P., Wedzicha, J.A.: Outdoor air pollution and respiratory health in patients with copd. Thorax 66(7), 591–596 (2011)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. Pérez-Martínez, P.A., Martínez-Ballesté, A., Solanas, A.: Privacy in smart cities - a case study of smart public parking. In: PECCS 2013 - Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Pervasive Embedded Computing and Communication Systems, pp. 55–59 (2013)

    Google Scholar 

  20. Ray P (ed.): Special issue on emerging technologies in communications - area 1 m-health. IEEE J. Sel. Areas Commun. 31(9), 607–617(2013)

    Google Scholar 

  21. Solanas, A., Patsakis, C., Conti, M., Vlachos, I., Ramos, V., Falcone, F., Postolache, O., Pérez-Martínez, P., Di Pietro, R., Perrea, D., Martínez-Ballesté, A.: Smart health: a context-aware health paradigm within smart cities. IEEE Commun. Mag. 52(8), 74–81 (2014)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  22. Thom, M.T.J., Kannel, W.B.: Congestive heart failure. Dis. Manag. Health Outcomes 1(2), 75–83 (1997)

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Banzai Research Group, Department of Computer Engineering and Mathematics, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona, Spain

    David Riaño

  2. Smart Health Research Group, Department of Computer Engineering and Mathematics, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona, Spain

    Agusti Solanas

Authors
  1. David Riaño
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Agusti Solanas
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to David Riaño .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Vienna University of Technology, Vienna, Austria

    Silvia Miksch

  2. Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona, Spain

    David Riaño

  3. Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Annette ten Teije

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2014 Springer International Publishing Switzerland

About this paper

Cite this paper

Riaño, D., Solanas, A. (2014). Exploiting the Relation Between Environmental Factors and Diseases: A Case Study on Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease. In: Miksch, S., Riaño, D., ten Teije, A. (eds) Knowledge Representation for Health Care. KR4HC 2014. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 8903. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-13281-5_12

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-13281-5_12

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-13280-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-13281-5

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation