Geomed '97 : proceedings of the International Workshop on Geomedical Systems, Rostock, Germany, September 1997

http://www.med.uni-rostock.de/HTML/Forschung/GEOMED/Buch.html>This volume contains the refereed proceedings of the first http://www.med.uni-rostock.de/HTML/Forschung/GEOMED/GEOMED97.html>Workshop on Geomedical Systems, GEOMED '97 , held in Rostock, Germany, in September 1997. Geomedical systems are information systems used to monitor the health situation in geographically-distributed populations. They are used both to detect and to forecast health risks. In recent years, many national and international (EU) projects on such systems have been established. These have involved geographers, epidemiologists, statisticians and computer scientists. System design has attempted to meet to needs of potential users. The papers in GEOMED '97 present new directions in the field of geomedical systems and explore the interface with related topics such as epidemiological modelling. The papers will be of central concern to all scientists whose work aims to reduce the impact of disease on the human population. Front Matter....Pages 1-10 Front Matter....Pages 11-11 Detecting Space—Time Patterns in Geocoded Disease Data. Cholera in London, 1854 Measles in the United States, 1962–95....Pages 13-42 A Spatio-Temporal Model: An Application to the AIDS Epidemic in São Paulo, Brazil....Pages 43-53 A Geographic Information System Approach to Mapping AIDS in England and Wales: Standardisation of a Heterogeneous Data Set....Pages 54-57 Exploratory Spatial Data Analysis of Motor Neurone Disease in North West England: Beyond the Address at Diagnosis....Pages 58-69 The use of density estimation techniques in mapping the distribution of Hepatitis A....Pages 70-82 Aggregation Levels in Visualisation and Spatial Analysis of Epidemiological Data....Pages 83-93 Front Matter....Pages 95-95 The Detection of Outbreaks of Infectious Disease....Pages 97-117 Representing Aggregation and Scale Effects in HIV/AIDS Epidemic Modelling Systems....Pages 118-129 A New Approach to Space-Time Modelling of Infectious Disease Behaviour....Pages 130-140 Spatial modelling of cluster object and non-specific random effects, with application in spatial epidemiology....Pages 141-153 Front Matter....Pages 155-155 Information Systems for Surveillance of Communicable Diseases....Pages 157-170 The European Influenza Surveillance Scheme First Experiences With An Internet Application....Pages 171-182 Spatial Data Analysis Support for Cancer Epidemiology in CARESS ....Pages 183-193 Monitoring the Participation of Sentinel General Practitioner with the Health Care Workstation SITIE....Pages 194-203 A Strategy for Geomedical Surveillance Using the Hawkeye Knowledge Discovery System....Pages 204-213 An Early Warning System for Detection and Prediction of Outbreaks of Epidemics....Pages 214-224 Visual Analysis as an efficient Tool for the Exploration of Human Health Data....Pages 225-237 Content Analysis and Visualization of Epidemiological Documents on the Internet....Pages 238-248 A Neural Network Model for the Spread of Communicable Diseases....Pages 249-259 Identifying clusters in spatial area data....Pages 260-270 Back Matter....Pages 271-276 A key event in the development of modem epidemiology was the discovery by the English physician, John Snow, that cholera is transmitted by contaminated water. During the cholera epidemic in London in 1854, Snow mapped the locations of cholera deaths, observed a cluster of victims in a particular neighbourhood and found that most of these cases had drunk water from a communal water pump. The handle of the pump was removed at Snow's insistence, and the epidemic ended within a few days. Since these early days, the science of epidemiology has grown into a major discipline, with many successes to its credit. Many of the diseases which wreaked havoc in the last century have been brought under control, and in the case of smallpox, eliminated, through improvements in hygiene and the use of preventive and control measures such as mass vaccination. Nevertheless, in recent years, new problems have emerged, and old diseases have re-emerged. Many foodborne and waterborne disease outbreaks go unrecognized or are detected too late for effective control measures to be implemented. New infections, such as HIV, present new threats. Antimicrobial drug resistance, particularly the increase in drug resistant TB, also poses new challenges.