By situating each patient in his or her specific socio-spatial environment, RTHM enables doctors to prescribe data-driven, neighborhood informed, environmental directives for improving compliance in chronic disease treatment. Lifestyle change is well accepted as a treatment and prevention, but lifestyle is hard to define, and even more difficult to change. Lifestyle is highly personal, complex, an
d often too abstract to be positively influenced, especially from the level of general health policies. Our approach is therefore not only bottom up or top down - it is personal. We believe that the way each of us live is deeply connected to the place where we live and how we interact with our environment. RTHM defines and systematically visualizes lifestyle as a set of personal spatial practices. RTHM is a tool for doctors with the focus on each patient. Through RTHM, a patient isn’t a health statistic, but is a key partner in creating and maintaining a positive, health-based, social network. This network is situated within the single neighborhood, building on personal interactions and shared spatial practices to provide easier behavioral treatment. The RTHM Harvard Team has developed environmental health parametric technology. Our technology renders a patient’s health performance map by positioning personal health parameters within a network of neighborhood social and environmental parameters. By revealing, mapping, and personalizing health care resources outside of clinics, RTHM enables use of existing healthy resources in each patient’s personal environment - significantly reducing overall healthcare resource consumption.
