Dengue Spreads House to House and other Health GIS News
“It’s common in a dengue fever outbreak to first treat public places like schools for mosquitoes, but our results show the focus needs to be on residential networks,” says Emory University disease ecologist Gonzalo Vazquez-Prokopec.
..The data from interviews of 2,000 people was plotted over time and space using geographic information systems (GIS) technology.
The general thinking is that common areas where the public gathers like schools or markets are key in the spread of the disease, but data from a study in Iquitos, Peru shows that literally neighbor visiting neighbor is how the mosquito born illness spreads. That means treatment of houses may be more important than the simplier to do treatments of public areas.
Among the services now available either via membership fees or at a preferred rate to hospitals in Indiana is GIS. The Indiana Rural Health Association (IRHA) will begin offering SuiteSTATS, package with a variety of enterprise IT services. Among them:
-EnvisionHIT, a GIS application that supports healthcare business planning and market intelligence to help determine whether hospital can or should expand vertical practice groups (such as orthopedics or oncology) or new service centers.
The CDPH created the Healthcare Associated Infections interactive map to deliver infection information to consumers that’s less confusing. The map displays more than 300 California hospitals with symbols representing surgical infection rates for about a dozen procedures. Users click a symbol to generate a pop-up box disclosing the hospital’s stats for different surgeries. Data reveals whether the facility’s infection rates are lower, higher or equal to state or national averages.
From the About section of the map:
Publicly presenting information on individual hospitals’ infection rates is a crucial part of the California Department of Public Health strategy to reduce healthcare associated infections (HAI). This map was created by Stamen Design and funded by California HealthCare Foundation. It replaces our earlier award-winning SSI map by the same team.