On November 13, forty-five health researchers attended the Dalhousie-Esri Canada Spatial Intelligence for Health Forum at the Lord Nelson Hotel. This was the second time Dalhousie co-hosted the event, and this year saw a series of presentations about policy, research, application development, and issues related to care, illness and the future of health care and wellness in Nova Scotia.

The talks included:

• From Information to Outcomes: An overview of information processes and tools
• supporting public health practice in the UK
• Dr. Frank Atherton, Nova Scotia Department of Health and Wellness
• Health Mapping in Primary Care: Using GIS to Achieve the Triple Aim
• Dr. Ajantha Jayabarathan, District Department of Family Practice
• Geomatics from a Social Perspective (Nova Scotia Department of Community Services)
• Using ArcReader to Visualize a Population?Based Framework for Primary Health Care Planning (Nova Scotia Department of Health and Wellness)
• Nova Scotia Community Counts
• Estimating Arsenic Exposure in Nova Scotia Using Geospatial Analysis  (Atlantic Path Project)
• Location Tracking and Applications in Health Research (Daniel Rainham, Dalhousie Health Geomatics Lab)
• The Use of GIS by Public Health, CDHA, to Better Understand our Communities (Holly D’Angelo?Scott, Capital District Health Authority)
• Nova Scotia Single Address Initiative (Joe McEvoy, Property Valuation Services Corporation)

The day ended with a panel discussion about  data, privacy, the  provincial geomatics strategy,  and academic research which included James Boxall talking about the larger questions and developments in academic efforts shaping the future of health research. James is the director of the Geographical Information Sciences Centre (GIS), which is located on the second floor of the Killam Library.

Participants came away with both a greater appreciation of the spatial projects and research taking place as well as having a great many opportunities for networking and talking about collaborations and innovative solutions to the more complex problems of doing more research and application development within a policy framework where privacy is of the utmost concern.