Health Based Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and their Applications

Abstract

Medical researches as well as the study of the Earth’s surface, better still, geography are interlinked with each other; their relationship dates from antiquity. The science of Geographic Information Systems and, by extension, Geomatics engineering belongs to a discipline which is constantly developing at a global level. This sector has many applications regarding medical / epidemiological research and generally, the social sciences. Furthermore, this discipline may act as a decision making tool in the healthcare sector and it might contribute to the formulation of policies into the healthcare sector. The use of GIS so as to solve public health issues has an exponential increase and has been vital to the understanding and treatment of health problems in different geographic areas. In recent years, the use of various information technology services and software has lead health professionals to work more effectively.

Household proximity to water and nontuberculous mycobacteria in children with cystic fibrosis

“…A Geographic Information System, ArcMap 1 (ESRI, Version 10.4, 2016), was used to perform spatial analysis. 30 Three shapefiles containing oceans/bays, rivers/streams, and lakes/ponds for Florida and Alabama were downloaded from the National Hydrology Dataset website viewer (http://viewer.nationalmap.gov/viewer/ nhd.html?p = nhd) and added to the map. Home addresses of the patients who met inclusion criteria were geocoded in ArcMap 1 and added to the same map as the water shapefiles ( Fig.…”

Geographical Distribution and Cluster Detection of Childhood Leukemia in the Metropolitan Area of Guadalajara, Mexico

“…Mapping of disease data can lead to discoveries of patterns, ranging from clusters to uniformly spaced data or to randomly distributed data 33 . Specifically, the analyses of disease distribution and patterns are used within the study of AL research for different purposes: spatial distribution analysis of incidence and prevalence rates for diverse ethnic population groups [34][35][36] , mapping and analysis of hotspots for disease occurrence 37,38 , or analysis of clusters [39][40][41] .…”

A situation model of integrated health information platform in India: an anticipated review

“…Geographical Information System (GIS) provides information in the form of a geographical map as interface data with real-time monitoring and providing geospatial epidemiology. 9 Geospatial epidemiology provides the ability to describe and analyze geographic variations in diseases in the context of demographic, environmental, behavioral, socioeconomic, genetic, and infectious risk factors. It also helps to interpret geographic correlations of persons with their socioeconomic and demographic attributes and conduct public health surveillance.…”