What is Cartesian Co-Ordinate

Health-care systems aid in the diagnosis, treatment and prevention of diseases. Epidemiology deals with the demographic study on frequency, distribution and determinants of disease in order to provide better health-care. Today information technology has made data pervasive i.e. data is available anywhere and in abundance. GIS in epidemiology enables prompt services to mankind or people at risk. It brings out health-care services that are amicable for prevention and control of disease spread. This could be achieved when epidemiology data is modeled considering temporal and spatial factors and using data driven computation techniques over such models. This chapter discusses 1) the need for integrating GIS and epidemiology, 2) various case studies that indicates the need for spatial analysis being performed on epidemiologic data, 3) few techniques involved in the spatial analysis, 4) functionalities provided by some of the widely used GIS software packages and tools.