This ground-breaking title is the first comprehensive introduction to Geographic Information Systems (GIS) designed specifically for clinicians, physician-scientists, medical students, residents, fellows, and healthcare leaders.  

Medicine has long approached disease through biology—genetics, physiology, laboratory testing, imaging, and pathology. Yet every patient also lives within an environment that profoundly shapes health. Neighborhood conditions, air quality, transportation access, social circumstances, and the places where people work, learn, and age all influence health in ways that often remain invisible during clinical encounters and within the electronic health record. As healthcare moves toward increasingly personalized care, understanding these contextual dimensions has become essential to understanding the patient.

Geographic Information Systems provide clinicians with a powerful framework for integrating clinical information with the geographic, environmental, social, and built contexts in which health and disease develop. More than a mapping tool, GIS enables clinicians and researchers to uncover hidden patterns, identify environmental influences on disease, and better understand why patients with similar diagnoses often experience different outcomes. Central to this approach is the concept of geomarkers—place-based indicators that complement traditional biomarkers by capturing the environmental and community characteristics that influence health. By connecting clinical medicine with spatial science, GIS creates new opportunities to improve patient care, advance clinical research, and strengthen health system decision-making.

Written by a physician and a spatial epidemiologist whose long-standing collaboration bridges these disciplines, this book addresses the conceptual foundation for thinking spatially about patient care. Through clinical examples, practical guidance, and real-world experience, the authors demonstrate how geographic context can strengthen clinical reasoning while addressing the scientific, ethical, legal, and interpretive challenges of working with patient location data.

As precision medicine, artificial intelligence, and data-driven healthcare continue to evolve, understanding where patients live may become as important as understanding their laboratory values, imaging studies, and medical histories. Geographic Information Systems in Clinical Medicine: Understanding Place, Context, and Meaning in Patient Health offers a timely and accessible guide to integrating the science of place into clinical practice, enabling healthcare professionals to deliver more informed, equitable, and personalized patient care.

Jackie Curtis, PhD, is Co-director of the GIS Health and Hazards Lab and Associate Professor in Spatial Epidemiology in the School of Medicine, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio.

Wayne Tsuang, MD, PhD, MHS is Director for the Center for Environment, Place, and Health Research and Associate Professor in the departments of pulmonology, transplant pulmonology, and critical care at the Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland, Ohio.