AEGIS (Advanced Emergency Geographical Information System) is a Web-based hospital emergency situational awareness system that monitors and maps the location and status of emergency resources including hospitals, ambulances, and rescue helicopters.
Currently, AEGIS is used by Emergency Medical Services (EMS) to help determine disposition and transport decisions. In the next phase of development, we plan to give AEGIS additional functionality so that it may be used by all public safety organizations in disaster management. This requires moving AEGIS to an ArcGIS Server platform and allowing interactive communications between hospitals, ambulances, and field officers with mobile AEGIS functionality. For added security, role-based access has been implemented.
AEGIS also provides simulations, not only to train new users, but to provide a cost effective means for hospitals and regions to participate in disaster preparedness. What works best in a disaster is what works best on a daily basis. If public safety officials are accustomed to using AEGIS on a daily basis for routine EMS and other activities, then dealing with multiple casualty incidents or larger disasters using AEGIS will become second nature. These additional features expand the ability to acquire additional information to make better decisions during an emergency event.
GIS and Public Health in the Americas Carlos Castillo-Salgado, MD, JD, MPH, DrPH, Senior Advisor
Forum for Public Health in the Americas, Pan American Health Organization, Washington, D.C.
The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) is an international public health agency with more than 100 years of experience in working to improve health and living standards of the countries of the Americas. It also serves as the Regional Office for the Americas of the World Health Organization (WHO).
Since 1995, in response to the health services needs of the countries of the Americas, PAHO's Special Program for Health Analysis (SHA) developed a technical cooperation initiative, the purpose of which is the dissemination and use of GIS as a tool for analysis and problem-solving in epidemiology and public health.
Dr. Castillo-Salgado will provide a brief history of PAHO’s work in GIS, lessons learned, and future directions. Key highlights will include successful applications of GIS in the region (including Central America and Brazil), future directions for new metrics and tools including SIGEpi software, and roles and opportunities for GIS in dynamic public and health atlases.
Modeling Health Scenarios in a GIS Environment
Yasushi Ohkusa, PhD, Chief Researcher, and Tamie Sugawara, PhD, Researcher
Infectious Disease Surveillance Center (IDSC), National Institute of Infectious Diseases (NIID), Tokyo, Japan
Mathematical modeling helps health researchers to simulate the behaviors of systems or processes they are studying.
Drs. Ohkusa and Sugawara will discuss how modeling health scenarios in a GIS environment has helped them account for spatial distributions of multiple datasets and has provided access to many spatial functions. They will present a spatially explicit model simulating the spread and geographic diffusion of infectious disease (pandemic flu) through the Tokyo transportation system.
In addition to the goal of predicting more realistic case distributions in the model, Drs. Ohkusa and Sugawara will also share their thoughts on how GIS presentation formats provide added understanding for policymakers and public health workers.
In an ideal world, the flow and use of data and knowledge in all processes and in all locations would be seamlessly possible. That ideal world is achievable with only a little effort but great cooperation among groups in creating a common vision, a common process, and a common goal. This presentation will discuss the role of standards in obtaining the ideal world creating aggregated human and computer understandable databases with appropriate infrastructure, preserving the privacy and security of data. That data must include clinical, demographics, genomic and geographical data elements in order to meet multiple uses of data including patient care, clinical research, health and biosurveillance, reimbursement, quality, patient safety, auditing and reporting. Access to the ever increasing knowledge base must be integrated into process without overburdening the user. Such is the hope of tomorrow.
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