A system for geoanalysis of clinical and geographical data

Abstract

Patients enrolled in clinical trials are regularly subject to biological analyses and related data is included in Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) to summarize patient health status and to support administrative information. Well defined protocols guide the bioanalytes studies on patients. Often EMRs also contain geographical data about patients, i.e. place of birth and place of living. The integration of geographical data and biological analytes may represent a meaningful way to extract hidden information from data. For instance, possible correlations among outlier patients and some feature of areas they live in. In collaboration with the University Hospital of Catanzaro, we designed a framework able to integrate and analyze biological analytes. The system is able to relate biological data to diagnosis codes and to analyze integrated data against geographic areas of interest. The aim is to show correlations among patients features (e.g. cluster of patients with similar profiles or outlier patients) and areas features (e.g. presence of power grids or polluted sites). In addition we present a study on correlations between cardiovascular diseases and water quality in Calabria.