Weather App Provides Personalized Pain Forecast
/By Pat Anson, PNN Editor
Like many people who live with arthritis, Dave Richtor noticed that cold and wet weather made his joints ache more than usual.
“I’ve always just been stiffer and slower on grey days,” says Richtor, who lives in the seaside city of Brighton, south of London. “I’m in bed for ten hours a day. When I’m waking up and stiff, there’s obviously been in the night a temperature change.
“My grandma used to know when a storm was coming 20 minutes before it happened. She’d say, ‘Oh, a storm is coming. I’m getting a headache.’”
Feeling “under the weather” is more than just family folklore. Richtor was intrigued by a recent University of Manchester study called Cloudy With a Chance of Pain, which analyzed data from over 10,000 UK residents who recorded their daily pain levels on a smartphone app. The GPS location of their phones was then compared to local weather conditions.
The study found a modest association between weather and pain, with people more likely to feel muscle aches and joint pain on days with low barometric pressure – and the wet and windy weather that usually comes with it.
The study not only gave credibility to a link between weather and pain, it gave Richtor an idea. Why not create an app that gives users a personalized pain forecast? Many apps track the weather and some keep track of pain levels, but there were no apps that married the two.
“I’ve done extensive research into it, and can’t see those two things matching up,” Richtor told PNN. “Most people I know in this field have been like, ‘Why hasn’t anyone done this before?’”
That’s the inspiration behind Weather Flare, a free health app designed to help people with chronic pain anticipate changes in the weather and their pain levels. Users create a personal profile of their conditions, medications and symptoms, which are then compared to weather conditions provided by AccuWeather. The app “learns” from user input and develops a customized forecast to help people prepare for changes in their symptoms.
Richtor is currently holding a Crowdfunding campaign to raise money for further upgrades to the Weather Flare app.
Weather Flare is not just for pain sufferers. Richtor says people with asthma, allergies and other health conditions can benefit from knowing about weather conditions such as air quality and pollen counts.
He’s also working with a professor at the University of Sussex to develop a database to warn of drug interactions caused by the weather. For example, people with psoriasis who take methotrexate can be sensitive to prolonged sunlight.
“We’re incredibly excited to have the University of Sussex onboard to assist us with further developments for our app, making Weather Flare even more supportive for sufferers,” says Richtor. “The positive thing about me just having this crazy idea in my head, is that I can help other people manage their own conditions. If it just makes 1% of difference to someone’s day, then I’ve achieved what I set out to do.”
The app is still in beta stage – meaning the developers are still working out some technical issues. When I downloaded the app, it was unable to recognize my location despite repeated attempts.
Weather Flare is not just for people in the UK. Because AccuWeather provides forecasts and weather conditions around the world, it can be used anywhere. To download the app, click here.
