Gis in healthcare
GIS crawling into the Health sector is a powerful tool that has been successfully implemented to help address a number of significant health issues ranging from disease management to improved services.
The increasing utilization of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology over the past several decades has transformed health and human services (HHS) and given new eyes to public health professionals, researchers, and hospital and health system employees – as well as the public they serve.
One of the most interesting technologies that has emerged onto the scene is one meant to more efficiently address geographical links to illnesses, by displaying data which visually allows users to see geographical groupings of patient demographic data in a new way.
Geospatial offers healthcare professionals the ability to identify health-related trends and more thoroughly target healing efforts based upon those results.
It gives assess to the demographic data, such as a home address, workplace, cancer type, and even data collected from wearable health tech of all patients entered into the system.Â
Data is then geo-referenced and mapped. Healthcare professionals can visualize the locations of patients and determine if there are clusters of specific types of cancer associated with similar working conditions or residential areas.
The role of GIS systems should not be limited simply to tracking occurrences of diseases though. One of its most powerful aspects is its ability to use geography and other inputs to identify where diseases are most likely to spread next.
