Growing Use of GIS Maps by the Government & Healthcare Organizations

Peter GroenGeoplatform.gov is up and running and growing more robust with every passing month. This resource is hosted and supported by the General Services Administration (GSA). This is the same U.S. government agency  that also hosts the government's national repository of government data sets known as Data.gov.

The Geospatial Platform is a web-based solution for providing shared and trusted geospatial data, services, and applications for use by the public and by government agencies and partners to meet their mission needs. It was developed by the member agencies of the Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) in collaboration with public and private sector partners and stakeholders.

The Geospatial Platform plans to significantly expand access to high quality public data sets, which should help reduce government operating costs while simultaneously stimulating innovation, growing new businesses, and creating jobs. The target audience for Geoplatform.gov includes: Federal agencies, State, local, and Tribal governments, private sector, academia, non-governmental organizations, and the general public.

In addition to the Geospatial Platform, a growing number of federal agencies like the State Department, the Census Bureau, and the National Park Service (NPS) are now using OpenStreetMap. This free and open source software (FOSS) geographic information system (GIS) solution is continually being enhanced and is an attractive option many public sector and non-government organizations (NGO) are now using.

Many 'Open Health' organizations are also starting to use Geographic Information System (GIS) to capture, store, manipulate, analyze, manage, present and display data about their 'open source' health IT solutions, e.g. iHRIS, OpenMRS, RPMS, VistA.  They are able to use a range of free and open source GIS solutions now available such as:

• GeoTools
• Google Fusion Tables & Google Map Maker
• GRASS GIS
• OpenGeo Suite
• Ushahidi's Platform & Crowdmap

* See a more comprehensive list of open source GIS tools at http://opensourcegis.org

Finally, over the past decade, health authorities have learned how to use geospatial technologies to help respond to influenza outbreaks, plan responses to public health risks of extreme weather conditions, implement breast cancer programs, track West Nile virus, and much more.  Check out some of the various GIS maps, tools , data & resources available from the CDC – http://www.cdc.gov/gis/applications.htm