In the past 14 months, I posted 556 pages on my ScoopIt devoted to GIS and HIT (sum, approx. 8500 views, 4250 viewers).  

 

85% of these viewers visited the 3 sections of this ScoopIt! known as ‘Episurveillance’, ‘Global Health Care’, and ‘Medical GIS Guide’. 

I then dissected the postings down further to evaluate those related to the current Ebola outbreak.  These are my results.

 

 

 

 

Medical GIS: 2653 visitors, approx. 5600 views total; 217 postings total, 91 for Ebola (42%)   

Episurveillance: 736 visitors, approx. 1400 views total; 222 postings total, 78 for Ebola (35%)   

Global Health Care:  401 visitors, 783 views total; 117 postings total, 61 for Ebola (52%).   

 

To define the pages posted, I evaluated the primary purpose and content for the main article(s) cited.  Some pages contained by to 50 articles with links provided, with articles varying considerably in their content.     

 

The primary topic  of the posting was the focus of this review (which was a consolidation of the articles content).  These articles, publications, books, speeches, quotes, photoessays, and news items referred to one each page were evaluated, and the primary theme defined.        

 

At the time these articles were posted, there was of course my own biasedness in selecting what to post once October 15th was reached, and it was determined that Ebola appeared to be past the prime of its potential ecological migration to North America in the immediate future.  I ended the evaluation of all articles on the internet related to Ebola on October 31st, but continued reviewing the main news features or topics about Ebola as the total numbers of these articles accelerated considerably throughout November and December 2014.  I posted pages detailing to primary hot topics as new ones arose or content and reactions to the disease changed.   

 

I provided 2090 links (references provided) at my entire ScoopIt! for these three sections, 1090 (51%) of which were in direct reference to Ebola (excluding my history writings).  By the end of 2014 I had posted 230 pages on Ebola, 138 pages on other surveillance matters such as the measles, mumps, whooping cough, polio, MIRS, Chikungunya, and encephalitis outbreaks, as well as a number of socially important surveillance related diseases or disease matters such as immunizations and refusal to immunize (36 postings, 62 links), infibulation and other cultural issues (64 postings and links), and teen age suicide and similar teenage or children school and health related matters (14 pages, 70 links).    

 

I used this to identify the hot topics in medical GIS for 2015 (more details on this part of my study later).      

 

These findings in turn provide reason for establishing a live Medical GIS station at the typical standard health insurance company, managed care, PBM, and large university hospital/teaching institution settings.     

 

The purpose of such a GIS would be to monitor: 1) in-migrating disease patterns, 2) cultural and ethnically linked public health matters, 3) ICDs, E-code and V-code indicators of the most socially important public health concerns (abuse, violence, poverty-realted ICDs and V-codes), 4) local low SES related population health patterns, 5) local standard infectious and environmental host-vector disease rates, 6) immunizable disease rates (whooping cough, etc. outbreaks) and anti-immunization V-codes, 7) culturally-linked or specific ICD public health indicators (Tb infected newborns in Pac NW), 8) culturally-bound syndrome ICDs, and 9) complete disease pattern profiles (75-150 ICD profiles) for the major ethnic groups in the region, such as African American/Black (subtypes?), Hispanic/Latino/a (and subtypes?), Asian (subtypes?) and Native American.

 

For this study of the Ebola topics referred to in the illustration here posted, the line charts demonstrate the periods of different behaviors related to this outbreak.  I categorized the articles content in what I call: [RED LINE] the warning period (people like myself voicing our concerns/need for an immediate WHO/CDC response), [ORANGE] articles that focused on the CDC, WHO and agencies being and acting as though they were unprepared for the outbreak (even months into it),  [GREY] the articles in which public and professional criticisms about this lack of preparedness emerged, and [YELLOW] the articles occasionally posted focusing just on the official reactions to these criticisms by WHO, CDC or the attached governments.     

 

 The articles counted as ‘other’ [BLUE] did not fit into these four classes and were usually about non-critical case/death counts, news about the Ebola spread without judgmental statements or conclusions made, news flashes about the results of new studies of Ebola or its treatment, pharma news, stock investors news, African economy and ebola news, etc.

 

 

 

See on Scoop.it – Medical GIS Guide