Cities with quality healthcare can foster economic development.
Using Big Data Analytics to Save Lives
Rochester, New York: Leading as a Healthy City (by IBMSocialMedia)
Rochester New York, is an example of a city that recognizes the unique opportunity that healthcare plays as the cornerstone of economic viability. They’ve worked to transform their healthcare system with ambition, vision and innovation to outperform and attract new business, jobs and foster economic development.
Children who live in walkable areas, with a child-friendly park nearby and access to healthy food have 59% lower odds of being obese. More on This Big City.
兒童若居住在適合步行的環境，住家附近又有兒童公園，亦有商家販售健康食品，肥胖機率會下降59%。更多內容請見《城事》。
Anatomy of a smart city - SmartPlanet
A comprehensive analysis from Forrester Research explores the role the information and communications technology (ICT) will play in creating the foundation for smart cities — whether those cities are newer communities being built from scratch or centuries-old metropolises. The report, “Getting Clever About Smart Cities: New Opportunities Require New Business Models,” suggests that new management approaches will be required to manage urban areas, as the population in those areas grows by an anticipated 2.3 billion over the next 40 years. That data (which comes from the United Nations) suggests that 70 percent of the world’s total population will live in cities and surrounding regions by 2050. According to Forrester, a smart city is one that “uses information and communications technologies to make the critical infrastructure components and services of a city — administration, education, healthcare, public safety, real estate, transportation and utilities — more aware, interactive and efficient.”
IBM To Give $50 Million In Tech And Consulting Services To 100 Cities
IBM today announced a plan to give away $50 million of its services and technology over the next three years to 100 municipalities through a program the company is calling the Smarter Cities Challenge. Funded via IBM’s philanthropic division, according to an IBM press statement, the Smarter Cities program aims to help municipalities around the world— with populations of 100,000 to 700,000 ideally— solve local problems in any of the following areas: healthcare, education, safety, social services, transportation, communications, sustainability, budget management, energy, and utilities.
Planning Our Cities to Better Our Health
Around the turn of the last century, city planning was motivated by concern for citizens living in urban industrial areas. Not long after, “the planning of built environments was hijacked by the car,” and driving needs and consumer convenience began to dictate design. The solutions-oriented publication argues that it’s time to dispose of car-centered approaches to city planning and put public health at the forefront.
Living near public transport can lead to longer, healthier lives
A new study for the The American Public Transportation Association finds that people who live in communities with high-quality public transportation generally live longer, healthier lives:
People who live or work in communities with high quality public transportation tend to drive significantly less and rely more on alternative modes (walking, cycling and public transit) than they would in more automobile-oriented areas. This reduces traffic crashes and pollution emissions, increases physical fitness and mental health, and provides access to medical care and healthy food. These impacts are significant in magnitude compared with other planning objectives, but are often overlooked or undervalued in conventional transport planning.The good news:
[M]any simple, affordable, and often enjoyable lifestyle habits can lead to healthier and happier lives: breath fresh air, avoid dangerous driving, maintain healthy weight, be physically active, eat fresh fruits and vegetables, maintain friendships, and avoid excessive stress.The bad news:
Many people find it difficult to maintain healthy habits. As a result, the U.S. has relatively poor health outcomes compared with peer countries, and according to some projections average U.S. lifespans may actually decline in the future due to growing but avoidable health risks.But:
This analysis can help transport and health professionals better coordinate their efforts to create communities where people can live long and prosper…. When all impacts are considered, improving public transit can be one of the most cost effective ways to achieve public health objectives.Interesting to consider, then, how transportation planning techniques like Hans Monderman’s — based on the observation that individuals’ behavior in traffic is more positively affected by other people and the built environment of the public space than it is by conventional traffic control devices and regulations — might take part in a predominantly public-transport culture.
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No doubt.
Staying Healthy In Big Cities - Forbes.com
The core systems on which cities are based are becoming instrumented and interconnected, enabling new levels of intelligence. What if our newly technology-empowered cities could use better connections and advanced analytics to create “smarter health care”? A smarter health care system will improve connections across our urban networks of providers, patients, payers and researchers. It can generate richer sets of data, including integrated records for each patient to enable personalized health care. It can connect vast amounts of information to improve research, diagnosis and treatment of diseases like cancer, diabetes and hypertension—diseases that compromise the quality of life for citizens and pose a major strain on the economy.
Rob Merkel is the Global HealthCare Service Line Leader for IBM Global Business Services. For 19 years he has helped many of the world’s leading health care brands, governments and institutions tackle their complex challenges.
