The quest to use technology and information to provide solutions to health problems in Africa and other developing regions led to SATELLIFE’s latest endeavor working with handheld computers. Also called personal digital assistants or PDAs, these small but powerful tools could be employed for use in two major capacities: as survey tools and to carry information. Ultimately a variety of public health applications could benefit from this relatively new technology.

International Journal of Health Geographics 2002, 1:4

This paper deals with the role of ICT in improving health in developing nations

Bibliography

In his feature article contributed to the ICT for Development community on the Gateway, Mark Storey, a Program Officer at the American International Health Alliance (AIHA), argues that "Over the past decade information and communication technology (ICT), in particular the advent of the Internet, has presented new opportunities and models for health professionals to access the most current information and update their skills—especially in countries where economic and financial conditions have prevented medical libraries from maintaining subscriptions to journals. This article will survey many of the ways that ICT can potentially impact health, drawing upon several specific examples from the Eurasia (here, referring to the countries of Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union)."

GIS provides excellent means for visualising and analysing epidemiological data, revealing trends, dependencies and inter-relationships. It can acquire, store, manage, and geographically integrate large amounts of information from different sources, programmes and sectors. GIS serves as a common platform for convergence of multi-disease surveillance activities. Standardised geo-referencing of epidemiological data facilitates structured approaches to data management. Once the basic structure is ready, it is easy to convert it to surveillance system for any other disease. Public health resources, specific diseases and other health events can be mapped in relation to their surrounding environment and existing health and social infrastructures. Such information when mapped together creates a powerful tool for monitoring and management of epidemics. GIS helps generate thematic maps that depict the intensity of a disease or vector. It can create buffer zones around selected features and then combine this information with disease incidence data to determine how many cases fall within the buffer. It can also map the impact zone of vector breeding site, where control activity needs to be strengthened. GIS can identify catchment areas of health centres and also locate suitable site for a new health facility. It can overlay different pieces of information and carry out specific calculations. GIS allows interactive queries of information contained within the map, table or graph. It permits a dynamic link between databases and maps so that data updates are automatically reflected on the maps. Dynamic maps published on the Internet assist patients in locating the most convenient health services easily. GIS can process aerial/satellite images to allow information like temperature, soil types and landuse to be easily integrated, and spatial correlations between potential risk factors and the occurrence of diseases to be determined.

This paper describes use of the global positioning system (GPS) in differential mode (DGPS) to obtain highly accurate longitudes, latitudes, and altitudes of 1,169 houses, 15 schools, 40 churches, four health care centers, 48 major mosquito breeding sites, 10 borehole wells, seven shopping areas, major roads, streams, the shore of Lake Victoria, and other geographic features of interest associated with a longitudinal study of malaria in 15 villages in western Kenya. The area mapped encompassed approximately 70 km2 and included 42.0 km of roads, 54.3 km of streams, and 15.0 km of lake shore. Location data were entered into a geographic information system for map production and linkage with various databases for spatial analyses. Spatial analyses using parasitologic and entomologic data are presented as examples. Background information on DGPS is resented along with estimates of effort and expense to produce the map information. Am. J. Trop. Med. Hyg., 58(3), 1998, pp. 266–272 Copyright q 1998 by The American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene

In this publication, the author approaches the evaluation of health impact by investigating the ICT life cycle from development to its use in society, and the various points in the process at which health impacts are yielded. Relationships between corporate social responsibility, health information, behavior, and ICT use are examined. The author reviewed Digital Opportunity Initiative (DOI) and Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) mechanisms for evaluating health impact of ICT. The DOI recommends the correlation of health applications of ICT with pre-existing, population-based health indicators, such as maternal mortality, disease incidence, food security, and nutrition. PAHO’s approach is to measure health outcomes by creating a series of ICT and health indicators that evaluate ICT integration in relation to quality of health services, access to medical information, and personnel management.

Researchers, policymakers, and program managers have long recognized geographic location as an important factor in population and health outcomes. Knowing how the health of women and children may differ by where they live can lead to a better understanding of where and why events occur and how interventions can be implemented effectively. But demographic and health data collection has not traditionally included the detailed locational information needed to incorporate geography into complex analyses. To broaden the uses of its data, MEASURE has expanded the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) and Service Provider Assessments(SPA) to include geographic data. With this new locational information, MEASURE data can be analyzed as part of a geographic information