The other big change is that "a lot of healthcare organizations now keep geospatial data  – patient records, hospital admissions, things like that, that have a geographic identifier," she says. "We can then analyze those in GIS to understand where patients are coming from, what types of patients have what types of health problems."

Beyond patient-focused care, that insight can help with organizational advancements, such as informing plans for locations of new clinics, for instance.

Still, says McLafferty, "I think (GIS) is not used to its full potential. There are some healthcare organizations that are doing this. Some of the larger groups like, say, Blue Cross Blue Shield or the hospital chains. But a lot of healthcare providers have not made the leap into GIS."

That said, "I think we're going to see that in the next several years," she says, "especially with electronic medical records. Those are going to be geocoded and then used to their potential."

A big driver, of course, is the fact that accountable care means hospitals will be incentivized – beyond the obvious goal of improving the health of their community – to better target their care interventions and reduce readmissions.

"One of the basic strengths of GIS is the ability to map and visualize things – you can actually see where your patients are coming from if you're a hospital: what neighborhoods, where do they come from in relation to other hospitals and clinics, and so-on," says McLafferty.

"Beyond that, we can look at proximity – where, for a particular population, how many highways might be generating pollution. Where are the bus depots? How far away? We can even do things like model the flow of air pollution from highways over to neighborhoods. In my current work, we're creating maps that show where people have very little access to primary healthcare. You've heard of food deserts, these are more like doctor deserts."

McLafferty says she "definitely expects to see more use of these systems in the future – I think we're already starting to see that. If you look back to the 1990s, when this technology was just becoming available, there were very few healthcare organizations that were using these methods. Most of the use was in federal government agencies or some very large health departments. Nowadays, we're starting to see technologies trickle down to smaller public health departments and larger health organizations."

Some of the impetus stems simply from ease of use, she says: "We have things like Google Maps – people are able to do mapping on their own fairly easily, and people's general awareness of mapping is increasing."

The other big pivot toward the future has come in just the past five years or so: widespread adoption of EHRs themselves.

"A lot of the data is now in computerized form rather than being in those old paper files that sat in doctors' offices and could not be used," says McLafferty. "The EHR revolution is also creating a revolution in GIS applications."