About our project
The problem we solve: We're targeting the over 30,000 flare-ups that occur daily in the US, 5,000 of which are so severe that they require an ER visit. Of those 5,000 ER visits, 20% result in inpatient hospital stays of 3-5 days. And, 11 people die every day in the US due to an asthma attack. DailyBreath reduces uncertainty, alleviates fear, and helps avoid pain by delivering personalized insights as to the risks of having severe allergy symptoms or asthma attacks due to the weather and environmental conditions for that day.
About our solution:
The DailyBreath service ultimately provides the allergy and asthma sufferer the when, where, and under what weather and environmental conditions they are susceptible to a higher risk of severe allergy symptoms or an asthma attack. We're personalizing what's been traditionally a public health approach by making patients/consumers location aware, weather informed, and health prepared for the environmental factors they will encounter in their day. Our risk index progresses from being based on evidence (researched by CASE Consultants International of Asheville, NC, to population-based, and ultimately, a personalized risk index based on a patient's individual susceptibility to exposures.
Progress to
date:DailyBreath was launched on September 30, 2017 in the Apple iTunes App store. Text 'dbnow' to 41411 to download. It's a beta to the masses with updates scheduled at two week intervals. DailyBreath is free and DailyBreath Personalized is .99 renewed annually. An Android version will be released in mid-late November. COPD will be added as an additional health condition option along with a specific evidence based risk index and corresponding impact summaries and daily recommendations for that patient population.
In addition to the patient/consumer app market, I have a half dozen API customer prospects who I have now resumed discussions toward partnership following the release of DailyBreath in the market. DailyBreath code for the mobile app is being repurposed for a DailyBreathForecast.com website that is accessible via a deployable widget. Also code is being repurposed for a DailyBreathLiveMap.com which provides a geolocation capability to view flare-ups of DailyBreath members in your commmunity.
About Our Team
Creator: Eric Klos
Location: Virginia
Education: Purdue
Bio: DailyBreath was soft launched in the Apple iTunes App store on September 30th, 2017. This followed a year long development effort by HEALTHeWeather's development partner, Pantheon. In 2017 he began to raise funds through family, friends, and angel investors. Eric previously developed a prototype for DailyBreath shortly after starting HEALTHeWeather officially in August 2016.
Prior to starting HEALTHeWeather, he had cofounded G2Xchange Health, a membership-based online community for Federal Health IT executives in July 2014. He was instrumental in developing the G2X Health DailyTake and supported G2X Heath events in 2014 and 2015. He continues as a Health IT SME and Advisor.
Prior to G2Xchange Health, Eric, had founded HealthTechture, his business consulting firm providing strategic planning, marketing development, and competitive intelligence to Federal Health IT firms and taking on government contracting roles in support of the Office of the National Coordinators for Health IT and for the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality’s MONAHRQ Program.
Over a 15-plus years career he has developed marketing plans and sales strategies targeted at Federal Health agencies including VA, the DOD Military Health System, and HHS and won multi-million dollar contract awards. Companies he has represented include two Electronic Health Record (EHR) vendors, a patient safety reporting software company, and an emerging health information services provider (HISP) with an HIE technology platform.
Eric spent over 12 plus years on Capitol Hill first working for Congressman John Myers, who represented the 7th Congressional District of Indiana then leveraging a proficiency in information technology to take a position at the House Committee on Veterans Affairs as the Director of Information Technology. His time on Capitol Hill has helped him understand trends that emerge from policy developments that will have business impact well into the future.
Title: CEO
About Team Members
Andy Weixler
Vice President,
Biography: Andy Weixler, Vice President, an asthma patient himself, brings more than 15 years of experience directing product marketing, marketing communications, and branding efforts for software (Cloud/SaaS), high-growth technology, Health IT, and financial services businesses.
Title: Vice President
Twitter:
https://twitter.com/aweixler
LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/aweixler/
How We Help Physicians
Ultimately, the innovation at the enterprise has great potential. Providers would benefit from an Enterprise view of their patients crowdsourced flare-ups. Imagine if providers could understand where in their community patients were most vulnerable to pollen allergens or pollutants. In addition, the efficacy of drugs with respect to weather and environmental conditions could be very valuable in developing and refining treatment options. We have scoped out requirements for the Premium/Enterprise, but because environmental factors have not been given a fair shake in delivering medical care, it's really a blank sheet as to how the availability of this information will support physicians. With the proponderance of patient-generated data like DailyBreath data, we don't want to burden physicians. We have a medical advisory board under development with three of the premier allergy and asthma specialists to support us in meeting physician needs.
How We Help Hospitals
Under a trend towards value-based care, physicians and hospitals, are going to need to manage asthma and COPD patients more effectively. ACO's and payers will be able to ascertain average costs for asthma or COPD patients and over time physicans and hospitals will eat the costs of patients whose care has not been managed effectively.
How We Help Partners
Already, I've been approached by API integration partners; including allergy, asthma, and general care management application providers who want to integrate the DailyBreath Risk Index proactively for its users as well as connect their symptoms trackers to weather and environmental exposure data to refine that risk index and provide greater value to its users. Our use of DailyBreathForecast.com and DailyBreathLiveMap.com will promote a wide range of API integration opportunities as we move forward to discovery the full range of possiblities.
Challenge Mission
Key Milestones Achieved and Planned
We launched DailyBreath as a beta to the masses on September 30th, 2017. Following two updates, we'll be launching more publicly the week of November 6th, as I am speaking at a Workshop on Climate and Respiratory Health, in Asheville, NC. Near term, we are developing our Android version for release in late November prior to our inclusion of COPD in DailyBreath effective December 21, 2017, the 1st day of winter. Our goal in the next six months prior to Premium/Enterprise release in Spring 2018 is at least 3 API Integration partners, 25,000 downloads and 5,000 paid downloads.
Our Competitive Advantages
We are distinguising our offering in two key ways; 1) developing a personalized risk index and a personalized map view of where incidences occur for each member, and 2) developing a rich database of location, timing, weather and environmental data variables aligned with symptoms and flare-up information as well as patient prescribed medications. This is a nascent industry. Prominent players exist such as IBM with Weather Channel and Watson Health and Propeller Health. These players validate the opportunity. We have climate science experts informing our climate and weather elements and we have medical advisory board informing our medical recommendations for preventative action steps as well as maturing our Premium/Enterprise approach for supporting asthma and COPD care.
Barriers to Entry
We have a provisional patent in place. We are an early-mover in a domain that is emerging. The extreme weather events of this year such as Harvey and wildfires in the Northwest and Napa Valley have highlighed exposures like increased mold, pollen, and wildfire smoke that have respiratory impacts. We are having key discussions with government agencies involved in intiatives around environmetal health including citizen science for air quality measurement, development of a national pollen monitoring network, wearable sensor development, etc. With now over 2 years immersed in this domain, the CEO is perceived as a domain expert in the field despite not being a climate science expert, environmental health specialist, public health official, or medical practitioner.
Traction, Funding and Partners
I've bootstrapped since August of last year to the tune of over $25,000. My lead angel investor $20,000 to date is MOST, LLC. A close relative has provided a $5,000 investment and $10,000 loan. I have raised $8,879 via a GoFundMe campaign. My development partner, Pantheon, has performed development in return for equity. I am currently in a $100,000 raise of which $25,000 as detailed above has been obtained. I have investor leads pending investment in 4Q17 or 1Q18.
CASE Consultants International has been a key partner in researching the evidence base for the correlation of weather and enviornmental exposure thresholds with allergies and asthma and supporting development of the DailyBreath Risk Index. Along the way I received support as a member of The Collider in Asheville, NC which is developing climate solutions for the future. I have received help from Bluedoor in Chapel HIll, NC.in digital health strategy. Locally, I have had the support of Startups Ignite as a member of their Fall 2017 Cohort in the Accelerate24 program.
I have initiated API integration discussions with Allergistic, Asthma Storylines, URXmobile, and Caring Village.
Innovation Details
Intellectual Property Summary
Application Number: 62/558,030 FILED: 09/13/2017
MEDICAL DEVICES AND SYSTEMS FOR GENERATING HEALTH RISK
INFORMATION AND ALERTS BASED ON WEATHER AND ENVIRONMENTAL
CONDITIONS
Embodiments of the subject matter disclosed herein generally relate to methods and systems for enabling personalized health risk monitoring and alert functions by correlating current weather conditions with environmental factors which tend to increase or decrease a risk that someone may experience a flare-up associated with one or more health conditions.
Clinical Information
As this is a patient-facing app, we chose to introduce this to the patient/consumer market to validate three key issues; 1) that patients with these conditions wanted a weather forecast in the context of their condition and that they would respond that this forecast could be personalized, 2) that patients would record their symptoms or flare-ups in close to real-time if they know that the information would become calculated in a risk assesment for the future, and 3) that they would respond to a crowdsource framework for understanding where people are experience flare-ups in relation to certain exposures.
We believe there are opportunities to determine clinical efficacy in the future, but it is not required for our target patients to value the information and respond with the behavior change necessary to avoid negative health outcomes.
Regulatory Status
We do not believe the app as currently constructed requires any FDA clearance. Because the algorithm currently used is based on evidence-base and is not yet depended on a machine learning framework, the HEALTHeWeather Intelligence Platform does not run against any FDA regulations. Funds raised in the future will support a full and frequent regulatory analysis as we develop our solutions.
How we will use the funds raised
Funds will supplement a $100,000 angel/seed round of which $25,000 has been raised. The funds will be used to support the more rapid development of functionality for our Personalized version of DailyBreath, to incorporate COPD as an additional respiratory condition addressed by DailyBreath, and to quickly develop a Premium/Enterprise version, to begin to support the specialist/physcian - patient communications and interactions that support the patient's management of their condition. Specifically, we'll be improving UI/UX by engaging UI/UX resources, we'll be refining our patent pending algorithms for our risk index, and we'll be seeking to distribute DailyBreath through other mediums, like an Alexa skill.
The funds will also help us take functionality in DailyBreath to develop an engineering as marketing approach providing a DailyBreathForecast.com for the daily public health weather forecast by zip code, and a DailyBreathLiveMap.com of crowdsourced flare-ups by zip code. Sponsorship ads will be sold via these web sites. Widgets will be created that can be applied to relevant respiratory and health related web sites that will drive usage of these tools, drive app downloads, purchases, and utilization.
Thank You
The original idea of HEALTHeWeather was inspired by my sister having rheumatoic arthritis, but my research led me to target respiratory conditions because the causal impact of the weather and the environment is most apparent and there is a significant burden on patients, caregivers, and the healthcare system.
My passion for patients who suffer from these conditions came from a story about Diamond, a fifteen year old girl from Omaha, Nebraska. While visiting Iowa for a summer family vacation at an amusement park, Diamond had been out in hot, humid conditions that worsened air quality. Following a nice day at the park, her family went to the hotel pool in the evening. Obviously, hotel pools often have a fair amount of chlorine in the pools. Long story short, Diamond had an asthma attack,, stopped breathing, and ended up in the ICU, with a long recovery ahead. The article that I read said 'doctors were trying to figure out what had triggered the attack.' A GoFundMe account had been set up to help Diamond and her family with medical expenses. This prompted me to search for 'asthma tragedy' on GoFundMe. I was saddened to see over 200 hits on this search and, even more tragically, many were not raising funds for medical expenses, but funeral expenses.
Shortly thereafter, I was reading a prayer card from my mother's funeral, and it quoted Emerson's poem which concludes....to know that even one life breathes easier. So, we're putting in the crosshairs 30,000 daily flare-ups that lead to 5000 ER visits of which 1000 are inpatient hospital stays, and tragically, 11 patient deaths every day in America. We will measure success by the standard that even one life breathes easier. We ask you to help support our cause and vote for DailyBreath so that we can help allergy and asthma sufferers and their caregivers reduce uncertainty, alleviate fear, and help avoid pain by making them location aware, weather informed, and health prepared.
