OBJECTIVES

To characterize and compare asthma risk associated with select municipalities in the greater Helsinki metropolitan area (GHMA) of Finland, utilizing a unique geo-informatics risk assessment tool.

METHODS

The geo-informatics Risk Assessment (RAS) tool links relevant data sources by using a common geographical marker (e.g. municipal code), which is available in publicly accessible data (such as public health data, census data, environmental data, etc.) to compute asthma risk based on asthma medication use intensity across the municipalities of GHMA in Finland. Asthma risk was represented as a total risk score, which is a composite aggregation of three components: demographic risk (age, sex, etc.); socio-economic risk (income, unemployment rate, etc.); and health behavior risk (smoking, obesity, etc.). These risks scores were derived from a statistical analysis, followed by a machine learning predictive analytics approach using the asthma medication intensity risk as the outcome measure. The composite risk score as well as the component scores were rescaled to a range of 0-100. These risk scores were computed for each municipality in the GHMA and displayed as heat maps for better visualization.

RESULTS

GHMA municipalities [Etelä-Vuosaari (EV) and Helsinki Keskusta/Etu-Töölö (HKET)] with similarly sized populations were chosen to demonstrate the differences in asthma risk. EV (pop. 22,616; average age:40.0; 46.3% males) had a total asthma risk score of 33.0, whereas HKET (pop. 18,035; average age: 40.0; 47.3% males) had a total asthma risk score of 9.7. The national average is 43.5. EV total asthma risk was 3.4 times that of HKET. It appears that the % highly educated persons [21.90% (EV) vs. 52.20% (HKET)] and average income [22,321 Euros (EV) vs. 35,952 Euros (HKET)] may be driving this difference in risk.

CONCLUSIONS

The RAS tool provides deep insight into asthma risk, by utilizing relevant data sources linked by a common geographical marker.