Integrating Online Georeferenced Epidemiological Analysis and Visualization into a Telemedicine Infrastructure – First Results

Abstract

With the objective to perform a first evaluation of the impact of the integration of a graphic spatial epidemiology tool that allows quasi-realtime georeferenced data visualization into a telemedicine infrastructure, this work presents GISTelemed, an online module specialized on indexing structured and semi-structured data, as well as querying the indexed content using structured and free-text search. We evaluated GISTelemed accordingly to the guidelines published by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and input provided by a questionnaire customized according to AdEQUATE (questionnAire for Evaluation of QUAlity in TElemedicine systems). 39 healthcare professionals from 13 municipalities participated in the evaluation. We analyzed data from questionnaires using descriptive statistics, being Lernability and Comfort the characteristics that received the best evaluation. Quantitative evaluation based upon leprosis cases detected through tele-dermatology showed a sensitivity and PPV of respectively 77.2% and 95.3%. 22.8% of the cases detected were un-notified cases. Results from our case study show a good evaluation regarding the perceived software quality. We conclude that the integration of spatial epidemiology tools to the STT/SC system, besides enabling visualization of data in maps, allowed users to analyze the evolution of morbidities and their co-occurrences.