Flu season is here again, with all its aches, pains, and fevers. But scientists have a powerful tool to fight back.
The GPS technology used to plot your rush-hour route home? It also powers GIS (Geosciences Information System) tools that help public health officials pinpoint infectious disease outbreaks, limit their spread, and spot gaps in healthcare access. Whether it’s flu, COVID-19, or emerging diseases, GIS technology helps responders provide timelier and more effective care.
Let’s take a closer look at how public health officials use GIS technology to keep populations healthy.
GIS tools help public health officials collect and analyze data to make informed decisions about health threats. These tools turn location data into visual maps that show:
Let’s dig deeper into these three key ways public health professionals use GIS.
What’s a hotspot? In public health, it’s a geographic area where many cases of an infectious disease are concentrated. Hotspot mapping helps health officials use geographical and other data to identify these areas. Armed with this information, they can target their efforts and resources, whether they’re dealing with the flu or another disease.
Public health officials collect data from sources like:
These officials then anonymize the data to protect patient privacy and convert address details into map coordinates (a process called geocoding). GIS tools and spatial analysis software use special algorithms to quickly analyze massive quantities of location data.
Public health departments put this technology to work during the COVID-19 pandemic. For example, a specialized GIS-based mapping tool gave St. Louis, Missouri, public health officials a street-level picture of cases based on positive test result data. This helped them identify hotspots and determine patient demographics to better direct their prevention and treatment efforts.
After mapping hotspots, officials move to the next critical task: identifying everyone who’s been exposed.
Contact tracing identifies people who’ve recently been near someone with an infectious disease. After testing positive, the patient lists where they’ve been and who they’ve seen. Health officials then:
Contact tracing debuted in the 1930s during a syphilis outbreak in New York. It was also used, though controversially, during the AIDS epidemic. But traditional contact tracing relied on patients to remember everywhere they went and everyone they saw—and memory isn’t always reliable.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, sophisticated GIS-based tools transformed contact tracing. These location analytics tools use location data to track where infected people traveled and identify others who were in those same places at the same times. This person-to-person-to-place approach lets public health officials notify and advise far more potentially exposed individuals than traditional methods ever could.
Identifying outbreaks and tracing contacts is crucial—but what happens if people can’t reach medical care? Where are the hospitals, testing, and vaccination sites? Can everyone access them? Are more needed?
Public health officials must know where all available medical facilities are, especially when an infectious disease is involved. COVID-19, the most consequential infectious disease event in recent memory, showed us why this matters.
ICUs worldwide strained to meet demand during the pandemic. Yet for many, ICU access wasn’t even an option. In response, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), part of the World Health Organization (WHO), developed an online hub to share information across multiple countries in the Americas.
PAHO used geospatial technologies to identify more than half a million Amazon people living more than 100 kilometers from an ICU. Pinpointing vulnerable communities like these through mapping played a crucial role in reaching and treating them effectively.
Related WHO GIS initiatives helped with vaccine delivery and contact tracing, too. These efforts not only helped health officials respond to emerging health concerns but also strengthened community planning efforts, like providing enough healthcare facilities.
Thinking about a career in public health? Here’s the reality: Mastering medicine isn’t enough anymore. Officials need people who can operate the tools that track outbreaks, map resources, and identify at-risk communities. Specialized GIS training ensures you’re prepared to use these powerful tools in real-world situations.
GIS experts have a competitive edge, able to visualize data, identify patterns, and help make decisions that save lives.
Whether you’re analyzing disease spread, planning vaccination sites, or assessing community health needs, GIS training prepares you for real-world public health challenges.
The University of Texas Permian Basin’s 12-credit online GIS and Geospatial Graduate Certificate is designed for aspiring and current public health professionals. In fully online courses you can complete from anywhere, you’ll learn essential skills like spatial analysis, data visualization, and mapping techniques—all directly applicable to public health work.
Apply now and start building the expertise employers want.
Sources:
https://www.spatialnode.net/articles/applications-of-gis-in-the-health-sector30b829
https://www.ijcmph.com/index.php/ijcmph/article/view/10672
https://bmchealthservres.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12913-024-11837-9
Picture a city where green spaces flourish aboveground, self-driving cars travel underground, pedestrian walkways wind through tree canopies, and waste management operates autonomously. Around the world, cities like Singapore, Oslo, and Charlotte are moving beyond this vision and making smart, sustainable urban design a reality. At the heart of these developments? Geographic Information Systems (GIS). In…
“The application of GIS is limited only by the imagination of those who use it.” – Jack Dangermond, president of Esri Geographic information systems (GIS) have become indispensable for analyzing and visualizing spatial data. While many of us associate GIS primarily with mapping and GPS (global positioning system), its applications extend far beyond these familiar uses. For instance,…
As hurricane season ramps up, people in affected parts of the country and the world are once again thinking about how to prepare for the prospect of a big storm impacting their lives. GIS systems are central to the efforts public officials, first responders, meteorologists, and others make in managing crisis situations, including hurricanes, earthquakes,…