Geoinformation technologies in biomedicine and health care: Review of scientific journals

Abstract

Geoinformation technologies (GT) play an increasing role in everyday life and are used in many fields. GT capabilities can also be used by health care providers, in the daily practice of medical doctors and for research on where to locate new facilities and also to monitor the health condition of the society at large. The possibilities of using GT in and around health care, including in biomedicine seem to be obvious. The objective of this paper is to quantify the prevalence of and to identify research directions on the use of GT in biomedicine and health care on the basis of the Polish and international scientific journals. Two groups of journals were studied: the field of geoinformation and the field of biomedicine and health care. Chronological scope of the research covered the period of 2007 through 2010. Critical analysis method and bibliometric method study have been carried out. © 2012 Springer-Verlag.