GIS for Health Organizations

Rating:
Summary: An overview only
Review: Following the style of her previous "Managing Natural Resources with GIS", this book provides some vignettes on the use of GIS in health related fields. There is not a great deal of detail, although she provides some references for additional research. The book is well illustrated with full color images and the price is right.

The enclosed CD has nothing on it related to the content of the book and is a tutorial version of ArcView GIS 3.0. Makes sense since the book is published by ESRI, and it is certainly worthwhile if you would like some hands-on work with the software. The book does not particularly emphasize ESRI software, however.

If you are looking for some details on how GIS is being applied, this may be a good book to read, but you can find many similar items on the ESRI web site (or the sites of any of the popular GIS software producers).

Rating:
Summary: A quick helpful overview/ESRI sales brochure
Review: GIS for Health Organizations gives a very nice overview of the uses of GIS in the health environment. But, it does also seem to present mostly projects that use products developed by ESRI (which makes sense since they also publish the book). So, this book begins to seem like an ESRI brochure that you had to pay for, especially since the demo software included does not use the examples from the book. Overall, it is a nice quick reference of current uses for GIS, for the numerous programs that ESRI has helped develop for health care operations, and to get a quick overview of one of the GIS software applications on the market. A look at the ESRI website may yield the same information though, so actually buying this title may not be for you.

Rating:
Summary: A quick helpful overview/ESRI sales brochure
Review: GIS for Health Organizations gives a very nice overview of the uses of GIS in the health environment. But, it does also seem to present mostly projects that use products developed by ESRI (which makes sense since they also publish the book). So, this book begins to seem like an ESRI brochure that you had to pay for, especially since the demo software included does not use the examples from the book. Overall, it is a nice quick reference of current uses for GIS, for the numerous programs that ESRI has helped develop for health care operations, and to get a quick overview of one of the GIS software applications on the market. A look at the ESRI website may yield the same information though, so actually buying this title may not be for you.