Name: Your health depends on where you live
Uploaded: 2010-01-25T09:30:00Z
Duration: 9 min 8 s
Description: Where you live: It impacts your health as much as diet and genes do, but it's not part of your medical records. At TEDMED, Bill Davenhall shows how overlooked government geo-data (from local heart-attack rates to toxic dumpsite info) can mesh with mobile GPS apps to keep doctors in the loop. Call it "geo-medicine."

Where you live: It impacts your health as much as diet and genes do, but it's not part of your medical records. At TEDMED, Bill Davenhall shows how overlooked government geo-data (from local heart-attack rates to toxic dumpsite info) can mesh with mobile GPS apps to keep doctors in the loop. Call it "geo-medicine."

Your health depends on where you live

A person’s environment shapes health just as powerfully as genetics or lifestyle, yet few doctors ever ask about place history. After surviving a heart attack, the speaker reflected on decades spent inhaling pollutants in multiple cities but found that environmental risks never appeared in his medical records. Billions are spent collecting geographic health data, but this information rarely reaches the exam room. Harnessing location data and adding it to health records could help people and doctors make smarter, safer choices.