From Rob_James@Umanitoba.ca Wed Aug 18 06:35:48 1999 Received: from mxu4.u.washington.edu (mxu4.u.washington.edu [140.142.33.8]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW99.02/8.9.3+UW99.01) with ESMTP id GAA64768 for ; Wed, 18 Aug 1999 06:35:48 -0700 Received: from electra.cc.umanitoba.ca (electra.cc.umanitoba.ca [130.179.16.23]) by mxu4.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW99.02/8.9.3+UW99.06) with ESMTP id GAA14802 for ; Wed, 18 Aug 1999 06:35:45 -0700 Received: from nt_gate (24.66.58.3.mb.wave.home.com [24.66.58.3]) by electra.cc.umanitoba.ca (8.9.0/8.9.0) with ESMTP id IAA27299 for ; Wed, 18 Aug 1999 08:35:39 -0500 (CDT) Message-Id: <199908181335.IAA27299@electra.cc.umanitoba.ca> From: "Robert C. James" To: waphgis@u.washington.edu Date: Wed, 18 Aug 1999 08:38:27 -0500 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Subject: National health surveillance & GIS X-pmrqc: 1 In-reply-to: <000e01bee963$ca9eee40$7b790518@olmpi1.wa.home.com> X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.12) I was asked a few days ago what the were two or three leading international examples of integration of GIS into national health surveillance? (I think that sub-national, but large population entities such as provinces and states would also qualify.) Does anyone care to nominate a particular example or two? I should admit my bias. My concern is that at a national/sub- national level, a lot of effort and resources goes into the production of simple large-scale choropleth maps, etc.. and that the really tough stuff - careful geopositioning, geostatistical analysis, understanding the nature of measurement error, etc are yet to be well integrated into these sorts of surveillance projects. Am I being unfair? I am also trying to draw a distinction here between national surveillance initiatives and disease-specific, or research-oriented, surveillance that uses GIS. So, any nominees? Any comments? Rob James 204.231.0506 (Voice) 204.231.8449 (Fax) Dept. of Community Health Sciences, University of Manitoba -------------------- "The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink." G. Orwell Politics and the English Language, 1946. .