As it turns, GIS is fast gaining ground with more applications every year. The GIS-health nexus has always been a special one, especially with regard to communicable diseases. As technology drives many facets of health care and research, is the use of GIS still lagging behind? I aim to understand why!
I think that this situation fits in a more general context, the one of an increasing gap, on one hand among the scientific-technical communities, and on the other hand between these ones and decision makers. For fostering the application of GIS technologies in sensitive areas, such as "communicable diseases", I consider that post-normal science might be a promising approach.
Thanks all for these enlightening responses. I do believe the general consensus here is that accessibility and learning are the major constraints to the mainstream use of GIS. There is an increased use of "open-source" GIS software, which has potential, but their acceptance in high-impact journals remains to be seen. My learning of GIS has mostly been "self-taught", I do agree that it takes a bit of time and perhaps an expansion in thinking, but I do not think it is as hard as most people new to it would think it to be!
GIS is used not still enough and cause of it is a technical complexity of the product, and lack of IT competence in medical researchers knowledge (there is no information how to use GIS). I think, GIS is not only visualization tool, but also is a possibility for analysis like spatial-temporal spreading and density occurrence of infection disease etc. Researcher can try to use soft EpiInfo 7.0 of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
- Badges
- Science method
- Similar topics
- Biological Science
- Ecology