The field of medical geographic information systems (Medical GIS) has become extremely useful in understanding the bigger picture of public health. The discipline holds a substantial capacity to understand not only differences, but also similarities in population health all over the world. The main goal of marrying the disciplines of medical geography, public health and informatics is to understand how countless health issues impact populations, and the trends by which these populations are affected. From the 1990s to today, this practical approach has become a valued and progressive system in analyzing medical and epidemiological phenomena ranging from cholera to cancer. The instruments supporting this field include geographic information systems (GIS), disease surveillance, big data, and analytical approaches like the Geographical Analysis Machine (GAM), Dynamic Continuous Area Space Time Analysis (DYCAST), cellular automata, agent-based modeling, spatial statistics and self-organizing maps. The positive effects on disease mapping have proven to be tremendous as these instruments continue to have a great impact on the mission to improve worldwide health care. While traditional uses of GIS in public health are static and lacking real-time components, implementing a space-time animation in these instruments will be monumental as technology and data continue to grow.

Sepsis is a systemic, often fatal inflammatory response whose biochemical pathways are not fully understood and with no single biomarker capable of its reliable prediction. Increased interest in protein profiling to reveal fundamental biochemical events as well as disease diagnosis has grown considerably, largely due to advances in mass spectrometry and related front-end technologies. In this study, patients with sepsis and systemic inflammatory response syndrome (SIRS) were examined using plasma protein profiling following immunodepletion treatment to remove the most abundant proteins, serum albumin, transferrin, haptoglobin, anti-trypsin, IgG, and IgA. These proteins cause significant signal suppression, and their removal allows for lower abundance proteins to be examined through improved ion signal. Analyses after immunodepletion were performed using 3-dimensional reverse phase/strong cation exchange/reverse phase liquid chromatography with electrospray ion trap mass spectrometry (3D LC-MS/MS) and spectrum counting for comparative quantitation. The results revealed a major theme in immune system activity, including activation of the complement and coagulation pathways. Additionally, lipid transport may prove to be important in distinguishing sepsis from SIRS. Specifically, significant multi-fold changes were observed in 10 proteins and are now being investigated for the early diagnosis of sepsis.