Health 2.0 Middle East – Personal/Public Health: Location, Location, Location…!

Hippocrates, writing circa 400 BC, said that one’s health depends on the air one breathes, the water one drinks, and the environment in which one lives. Place matters in health! An outbreak of cholera in the Soho district of London in 1854 killed 127 residents over 3 days and caused the exodus of nearly three quarters of the population. The father of modern day public health, Anesthesiologist John Snow created maps of these cholera deaths and stopped the epidemic by removing the handle on the Broad Street pump. What was once thought to be an airborne disease was now confirmed to be one transmitted through consumption of contaminated water. Mapping of disease mortality on a map of Soho, Snow applied the basics of geographic information science.
The Health 2.0 Middle East - Dubai conference will feature an exciting keynote by Bill Davenhall on geomedicine. Mr. Davenhall served as the Global Health and Human Services Solutions Manager at ESRI the largest geographic information system (GIS) software developer in the world. The conference will be held 27th-28th January, 2013 at the majestic Jumeirah Beach Hotel. Mr. Davenhall will describe his work in the field of geomedicine – the intersection of public health knowledge with personal medicine through the use of geography. Global health begins at home. The obligation of nations to help citizens have a safe, healthy passage through life is neither a small nor simple matter --- not one taken lightly by the health authorities of the UAE. All of which are supporting and attending the Health 2.0 Middle East conference.

What Is Geomedicine?

At the present time, very little health-relevant geographic information is available to a clinician at the time of a medical diagnostic encounter, and it is certainly not a typical part of a comprehensive medical record. Geomedicine uses modern information technology to deliver information on a patient’s potential environmental exposures into the hands of the clinician while they are in the examination room. Mr. Davenhall will describe the uses of geographic information in disease surveillance and the growing use of GIS in today’s public and population health. GIS provides a powerful set of tools for understanding health risks to populations and for planning and evaluating interventions to improve population health.
Think of geomedicine as your personal health surveillance system, says Mr. Davenhall -- always turned on and always vigilant about sensing changes in your environments (communities, neighborhoods, households and worksites, both past and present) that might impact your health. Geomedicine has the capacity to become that platform -- a new medical informatics specialty devoted to bringing all the data together intelligently to actually do something to help you and your doctor keep you healthy. Only though informed informational partnerships with our personal physicians and our public health professionals will we be better served by what is revealed through the modern geographic microscope!

Those who are building electronic health records (EHR)— supposedly for the benefit of patients and health-seeking consumers—must make sure we have a reliable way to link our personal place history to the sophisticated electronic health records they are building now, says Mr. Davenhall. The Health 2.0 conference will also feature a session exploring EHR applications and their most commonly used functions for supporting clinicians’ needs across the continuum of care.

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About Health 2.0
Health 2.0: The conference. The media network. The innovation community. The Health 2.0 Conference is the leading showcase of cutting-edge innovation transforming the health care system and is the premiere platform connecting IT innovators to established health care providers. Health 2.0 covers the broadest spectrum of the technology revolution that is shaking up every sector of health care. Learn more at www.health2con.com

About Medica IQ FZ, LLC
. Based in Dubai, Medica IQ is a multi-disciplinary global Health 2.0 platform company. MedicaIQ offers a more convenient means to connect with health care consumers and health care professionals. Our targeted approach facilitates the needs of public health literacy by developing and delivering health behavior modification education products used in public health awareness and wellness programs. MedicaIQ also offers a variety of customizable mobile and web based solutions. Learn more at: www.medicaiq.com.

For more information and media inquiries contact:
Maajida Mint
MedicaIQ FZ LLC
Dubai, UAE +971 561 043259
Maajida.mint@medicaiq.com

This release was published on openPR.