A health-centric e-commerce platform enables targeting a health care consumer’s home environment to improve chronic disease management and health outcomes. Such an eCommerce-as-digital-health platform can be further integrated with remote consumer monitoring and pharmacotherapies. Blending multiple functionalities allows for monitoring consumers’ conditions, providing health education and digital interventions, and promoting self-care in home environments that support disease prevention and treatment. The integrated e-commerce function also guides consumers to biophilic design elements (such as indoor plants and natural lighting solutions) or ergonomic furniture that support stress reduction and a restorative environment.

The impact of the home environment as a therapeutic target for chronic disease prevention and treatment was presented in a peer-reviewed article “Home Environment as a Therapeutic Target for Prevention and Treatment of Chronic Diseases: Delivering Restorative Living Spaces, Patient Education and Self-Care by Bridging Biophilic Design, E-Commerce and Digital Health Technologies,” authored by Dorothy Huntsman and Grzegorz Bulaj. The researchers are respectively affiliated with Dayhouse Studio and OMNI Self-Care. Dayhouse Studio is a health-centric, biophilic design company that bridges design, biophilia, e-commerce, and digital health to create personalized interventions for chronic illnesses (including chronic pain, migraine, depression, anxiety, cancer, diabetes, and heart disease). The goal of the research project was to explore the role of the home environment as a therapeutic target for improving treatment and prevention of chronic diseases. The researchers noted that most research on lifestyle interventions focuses on consumer behavior change, and excludes the context of the individual’s home environment.

For people with neurological disorders, the research indicated that using biophilic design principles to modify the home environment for balancing the autonomic nervous system. For example, people with chronic pain or migraine can benefit from a personalized multisensory space that fosters the use of relaxation techniques and other self-care practices to activate the parasympathetic nervous system. Optimized lighting systems can serve as photobiomodulation interventions for people with migraine or fibromyalgia. For people with epilepsy, a combination of a restorative home environment and listening to specific music compositions can improve seizure control. Multisensory experiences delivered through biophilic home design and exposure to the outdoor natural environment can support improved mental, cognitive, and physical functions for people with dementia, Alzheimer’s, and Parkinson’s disease

For people with cardiovascular disease, the research indicated that exposure to natural environments via biophilic home design was associated with lower blood pressure and heart rate. A biophilic home environment can support lifestyle changes to foster physical activities, quality sleep, and better nutrition, which can all contribute to lower cardiovascular and cardiometabolic risks of diabetes and obesity.

For people with cancer, the home environment can help integrate self-management into daily activities. Self-managing physical and mental health conditions that often co-occur with cancer, such as fatigue, pain, anxiety, and depression include healthy lifestyle behaviors, self-determination, social support, medication management, education, and communications with care professionals and caregivers.

The researchers concluded that a holistic approach that includes home environment factors such as air quality and natural aesthetics can influence positive health outcomes. Such an approach could reduce health care costs by reducing reliance on clinical interventions.

Dayhouse Studio is an interior design firm located in Salt Lake City, Utah, grounded in biophilic design, sustainable practices and evidence-based research to improve health outcomes. The company offers design services for both residential and commercial clients. Dayhouse Studio is also a publisher of Dayhouse Living magazine, where “design meets nature, health and sustainability”.

OMNI Self-care is a health promotion and consulting company that creates evidence-based content related to self-care practices. The company provides creative solutions for businesses and investors that value sustainable, health-focused growth and living.

For more information, contact: Dorothy Huntsman, Founder of Dayhouse Studio or Grzegorz Bulaj, Ph.D., Founder, OMNI Self-Care, LLC; Email: dorothy@dayhousestudio.com and gbulaj@omniself.care; Websites: https://www.dayhousestudio.com/ and https://www.omniself.care/