Health-weather forecasting system sends local warning emails
In the early 1980s, John Bart, a Toronto doctor, began noticing that patients were having similar complaints on the same days. Hmmmmm, he wondered, could weather be the common factor?
As luck would have it, one of his patients was a meteorologist named Denis Bourque. So he asked Bourque to do some research. Sure enough, Bourque found that the International Society of Biometeorology had been compiling studies on human biometeorology for 40 years and had linked various weather conditions to various health issues.
Bart and Borque then developed an index that maps 14 weather conditions known to trigger health issues. They called it MediClim, and it’s now online, offering e-mail warnings to people when they are most susceptible to flare ups from migraine, asthma, arthritis or heart disease. Check it out.
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Cindy Billhartz Gregorian is a features reporter at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. She has reported for the Healthy & Fit section since its first issue. She's a distance runner with seven marathons under her belt. 
