This is an interesting report I came across from a UN-Vodaphone partnership designed to provide “research and recommendations on how to use technology and telecom tools to effectively address some of the world’s toughest challenges” (found via THDblog)

The story I was most interested in was Case Study 10: Environmental Monitoring with Mobile Phones (Ghana) carried out by Intel Research. I was struck by this paragraph, detailing the convergence of locative sensing and personal health status:

Another area for further exploration is the ability of mobile sensing to contribute to public health by linking health with environmental factors that have not been available before. For example, even though we know that there is a link between asthma symptoms and air pollution, previously it was not possible to directly correlate an individual’s symptoms with their exposure to air pollutants. Measuring people’s lung performance while measuring ambient air pollution exposure could shed new light on the links between air pollution and asthma, perhaps resulting in better treatments.

Clearly there are many thorny privacy concerns, but that’s the difficult (and fun) part to work out and begin to address.

Still, I think this example is on the mark in trying to link infrastructure, natural or man-made and population health patterns.