Is data the saviour of our health?

Covid-19 forced us to collectively think more deeply about population health and how to track the ‘health’ of areas via maps. We look to the Nordic Smart City Network, to see how they’re innovatively trialling the use of data to now target other health and wellbeing issues.

During the height of the pandemic, health updates quickly became part of the global landscape, whether that be at the regional or neighbourhood level (or non-geographical groupings such as age, occupation or ethnicity). This data was used to identify the prevalence and transmission patterns of the disease. In some countries, it led to localised lockdowns or tiered systems as a measure to prevent spread. Despite some clear resistance from certain groups to the measures, on the whole, populations quite quickly adjusted to a level of sacrifice of their personal data and freedom for the sake of the collective good of their community’s health. But what if, in a similar vein – importantly being non-invasive and anonymised –population data could be aggregated and mapped to help address alternative health concerns, improving wellbeing and equality outcomes for populations? The Nordic Smart City Network (a collaboration between 20 Nordic cities across five countries) is seeking to do just that: create liveable, healthy, and sustainable cities by collecting and utilising population-level data. Here’s an overview of some of the interesting initiatives they are trialling right now:

Health Data – Tampere, Syddjurs, Vejle

This project looks to introduce data, automation and digital support to address the strains on state healthcare systems caused by longer life expectancies and changing age distributions. The aim is to get a holistic view of lifelong health data and the interactions between behaviours and health, all the way from childhood to self-sustainability for elderly people, by obtaining a range of public and private data sources. This data can then be employed to create predictive and prescriptive preventative healthcare measures which can be fed back to citizens and local government as areas to work on.

Crowdsensed Data – Stavanger, Århus, Helsinki, Vejle and Copenhagen

For this project, city residents provide non-sensitive environmental and health data to help boost the overall health and liveability of cities. Data is already being gathered in large amounts by citizens but is locked in separate devices and rarely used in urban decision making. The project seeks to develop the crowdsensing field and use data such as on activity levels, popular routes, air quality, noise pollution and other sensors to improve public health. It will look to distribute environmental sensors to members of the community and launch partnerships with wearable tech companies such s FitBit and Polar. It is hoped that collected crowdsensing data can be used to better inform place shaping, urban planning and urban health projects.

This project aims to use data to reduce pollution and exposure to pollution traffic flows and public access to transport information. It specifically working model through data and urban planning. The employ radar technology while focusing on three main transport areas: parking, traffic (vehicles, cyclists and pedestrians) and bus travel. GDPR-approved transportation data (providing more privacy than video streams) and will be coupled with pollution measurements to provide an environmental lens to transport decision-making. The data set should provide a basis for decision making, improving issues such as traffic flow and cyclist and pedestrian circumstances, but simultaneously opening up market discussions and agile piloting to get input from stakeholders will improve the process and innovation.

Sleep monitoring of citizens with cognitive impairment – Aarhus, Reykjavik and Helsinki

The aim of this project is to improve the sleep of citizens in nursing homes with cognitive impairments (such as dementia). Good sleep is shown to have significant health benefits and improve overall quality of life. The City of Aarhus is leading this cross-Nordic collaboration, having taken part in a national sleep monitoring project that showed how citizens in nursing homes can have their sleep improved by utilising health monitoring data. This new project follows on and aims to develop technology that can overcome the challenges raised previously – lack of efficient sensors for monitoring and public data protection. This innovative approach will allow caregivers to use data to greatly improve their care for non-verbal citizens who may be unable to express their experience of poor sleep.