Geo-Medicine in Health IT

Geo-Medicine in the next generation of Health IT

Working with rural health clinics and under-served urban clinics we have begun the development of a new Health Information Technology software application that integrates GIS based Geo-medicine programming into a full suite of Open Source Health IT software bringing together Electronic Health Record, Personal Health Record and Health Information Exchange Network tools. Our work with clinics responsible for the health care of rural farm and ranch workers has perhaps most strongly demonstrated that “Geo-medicine” is an essential component of Health IT providing diagnostic and treatment related data to providers that takes into account issues of pesticide exposure, water and food quality and other environmental conditions that heavily impact on patients health.

Geo-medicine, (the application of spatial analysis methods to medicine), creates intelligent geographic solutions and technologies that help physicians improve their diagnostic capabilities by receiving geographically, culturally and environmentally relevant information at the time of a patient consultation. Our research, working with 145 health clinics over the past 11 years, has established the framework for the new software which permits an open source EMR software package to make use of a GIS tool set to establish the "place history" of a patient as a clinical marker and unlock basic information on a patient's health risks related to toxic air, water, ground, and food exposures, as well as culture and demographics, making this complex of information quickly and easily available to a consulting physician via the patient's EMR.

This next generation of Open Source EMR/HIE Geo-medicine enabled software tools are designed for use in rural areas, under-served urban communities and Developing Countries but have important implications for Health IT development in general.