Bill Davenhall’s TED talk-Your health depends on where you live
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.”
Bill Davenhall wants to improve physicians’ diagnostic techniques by collecting each patient’s geographic and environmental data, and merging it with their medical records.
Why you should listen
Bill Davenhall has spent three decades creating useful intelligence out of what seems ordinary demographic and geographic data. In the ’70s he built the first geo-demographic models that helped some of America’s most well-known franchises expand across the nation; in the ’80s he founded a start-up market research company that developed the first national database of estimates for the demand of healthcare services.
Davenhall leads the health and human services marketing team at ESRI, the largest geographic information system (GIS) software developer in the world.
What others say
“Geography is destiny in medicine.” — Jack Lord, MD
