New Lyme Disease Map and other Health GIS News

A new map pinpoints well-defined areas of the Eastern United States where humans have the highest risk of contracting Lyme disease, one of the most rapidly emerging infectious diseases in North America, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. researchers found high infection risk confined mainly to the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic and Upper Midwest and low risk in the South. The results were published in the February issue of the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene.

- press release

How do you figure out where to off teen health services in Gaston, North Carolina?

To decide where the satellite services were needed, officials used county GIS mapping data to see where teenage clients live. An emphasis was placed on pinpointing teens classified as being “at-risk” for not getting the services they need, [ the health department’s medical director, Velma] Taormina said.

“Gastonia had the most teens, but there were also hot spots around the county,” she said. “To address that, we chose to expand our clinical services for teens to those Bessemer City and Cherryville locations. Teens there may have transportation issues with getting to Gastonia.”

- http://www.gastongazette.com/articles/challenge-66876-teenager-parents.html">Gaston Gazette

Billed as the first official British Columbia government mobile application, the BC Health Services Locator launched Monday on Apple's iTunes app store.

- Vancouver Sun

Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/health/government+launches+first+mobile+which+uses+find+health+care+services/6111918/story.html#ixzz1lhfqyQyq

NJ Hospital Mortality Rates and other Health GIS News

The New Jersey Department of Health rated 72 major hospitals across the state according to the number of deaths per 100 patients for pneumonia, stroke, heart attack, and heart failure. That data was used to create the Google Map.

- NJ Spotlight

An independent study conducted by mapping analytics firm PetersonGIS shows that locations with the highest obesity rates contain the fewest farmers’ markets.

...Please note that correlation is not the same as causation.

The static, low resolution map makes local exploration challenging. 

- GIS Lounge

Health 2.0 announced today that it launched its first Health 2.0 Developers World Cup in which teams of developers, innovators, and entrepreneurs worldwide will compete in code-a-thons to build applications and tools that improve healthcare. The winners from each coding competition will face-off in San Francisco at the 6th Annual Fall Health 2.0 Conference for the Developers World Cup title. All finalists will receive free passes to the conference and a travel stipend. The winning team will receive a $10,000 cash prize, the opportunity to showcase their winning product on the main stage of the conference, and international visibility as world champions.

- details

Stewart County, TN's Alliance for Substance Abuse Prevention is anxious to put in place a program already up and running in neighboring Houston County:

The point of the mapping system for a coalition is to plot hot spot locations on a map and supply them to anyone who asks for them as well as giving them to police officers and county commissioners.

Hot spot locations are ones that they police have been called out to anywhere in the county that may be an undesirable location for juveniles to be in.

The Stewart County data will come from a new 911 system. I wonder if this program will get the same backlash as the recent Microsoft patent aiming to keep people out of bad neigbhorhoods?

- The Leaf Chronicle

Waze, Safely and Rxs and other LBS News

A company called LowestMed has launched a mobile app that allows consumers to compare drug prices at their local pharmacy chains.

The app will be a mobile extension of the company's Web resource for comparative drug prices and prescription discount cards.

- eWeek

Waze launched version 3.0 for Android. "The latest iteration of the app features a complete overhaul from the ground up, including a new minimalist graphic interface as well as Foursquare and Yelp POI integration to make it the most powerful local search navigation system on the market."

- press release

RunKeeper has nine new partners using its API, bringing the total to 45. New ones include:

1. Fleetly: Lets users track and improve their Fitness Level in a social game.
2. Pedometer Ultimate: Turns your iPhone or iPod touch into a powerful GPS stopwatch.
3. Nexercise: An interactive game that makes fitness fun.
4. CleverRun: Predicts your target time for your next race and compares your runs to runs of the same distance.
5. Cycle Log: Helps cyclists track performance with GPS mapping, interval timers, voice cues and more.
6. Coachya: Helps coaches provide training plans, track, manage and bill their teams and athletes.
7. Vitogo: Lets you log your strength training with coaching, motivation and social support.
8. Weighty: Allows you to submit your weight and fat percentage to the Health Graph.
9. Scosche myTREK: A wireless pulse monitor that is worn on your forearm and lets you manage your pulse, training type, calories burned, distance/speed/pace and more.

(I don't use RunKeeper or any phone based workout app. I just use my old Garmin Forerunner 201. It's the one Kate M. gave me after I lost my first one.)

- Bostoninno

Safely, the family safety app suite from Location Labs is announcing it "has enabled more than one billion family safety location checks since inception." And, there's a new feature: a check-in feature for the kids - so they don't have to call to say where they are.

- press release

New Malaria Risk Maps and Data and other Health GIS News

In a study published in the Malaria Journal, a multinational team of researchers from the Malaria Atlas Project (MAP), funded mainly by the Wellcome Trust, present the results of a two-year effort to assemble all available data worldwide on the risk of Plasmodium falciparum malaria, the most deadly form of the disease. Using computer modelling and data on climate and human populations, they have revealed the complex landscape of malaria across the globe. The maps build on the first ever Atlas of Malaria-Eliminating Countries published earlier this year.

Malaria continues to exert an huge burden of illness and death worldwide but, after decades of neglect, the war against the disease has entered an unprecedented era: it is high on the policy agenda, international funding is beginning to translate into real increases in populations protected by bed nets and other key interventions, and a growing body of evidence points towards important reductions in illness and death.

The maps have been made freely available, along with a wide range of other malaria resources via the launch of a new online portal at www.map.ox.ac.uk. The research was led by Dr Pete Gething from the Department of Zoology at the University of Oxford. He says: "These new maps and our online portal are really aimed at everyone involved in the battle against the disease: from the major international organisations and funders, to other scientists, to those actually doing the disease control work on the ground."

- press release

PulsePoint, the mobile app that notifies those who are registered and CPR certified when help is needed is moving on from its home in San Ramon, CA to San Jose. 150 other agencies are interested. No word yet on if it's saved any lives yet.

- CIO

On Tuesday Massachusetts announced plans to shut down one of the state mental health hosptials in Taunton. The Massachussets Nurses Association quickly put out a press release calling it a travestry, in part, because of geography.

"Their plan makes no sense," Coughlin said. "Our system has been operating well over full capacity for years. We can't provide the care people need even with our facility open.  The other issue is geography.  We are now forcing patients and families to travel to Worcester, Tewksbury or out to Western Mass for their mental health care. It's a travesty."   

- press release

Comparing Maps of Obesity and Car Travel and other Health GIS News

Here, we examine visually, through a series of maps, the association between obesity, diabetes, and sedentary transportation.

The maps are striking, but Anne Price and Ariel Godwin conclude:

... the relationship between sedentary travel and health outcomes can be misleading when additional contributing factors are not taken into account. While it is not our intent to claim a direct causal link between transportation modes and obesity rates, it is hard to deny the existence of some geographic patterns.

- Planetizen

Health Canada is drafting national guidelines for electricity-generating wind turbines that will establish a recommended minimum safe distance between the structures and homes. ...The Health Canada guidelines will deal with noise and shadow flicker, and will account for the power of the turbine, the size of the blade and local geography, [Dr. Moira] McKinnon [Saskatchewan's chief medical health office] said.

No doubt they'll need ot use GIS, once they figure out the details to manage noise and other impacts.

- The Phoenix Star

The [second edition of the online] British Columbia Atlas of Wellness shows that northerners are more likely to smoke, eat unhealthy food and die sooner than their counterparts in Vancouver and Victoria.

- Times Colonist

Earlier this week, the Missouri Hospital Association launched www.MissouriHealthMatters.com. I recommend checking it out. The site contains quality of care and patient satisfaction data filtered through GIS technology with hospital specific information in a dashboard format. My thanks to David Dillon, MHA's VP of media relations, for giving me the heads-up on the website. I can attest to David's observation that the reports contain the same data as reported to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, "however the interface is much more user-friendly and locally-focused."

It uses ArcGIS Explorer Onilne, which took a while to load on my machine.

- Columbia Tribune

A RESEARCH OBSERVATORY based at NUI Maynooth [Kildare, Ireland] have unveiled a new online mapping tool that aims to show exactly how some parts of Ireland are covered by hospitals or schools.

The accessibility map, produced by the All-Island Research Observatory, highlights areas based on their proximity to facilities like hospitals, primary schools and secondary schools.

The map helps show diparities in services.

- The Journal.IE