Exploiting the relation between environmental factors and diseases: A case study on chronic obstructive pulmonary disease

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 socalled 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.