Volume 98, December 2025, Pages 173-179Author links open overlay panel, , , Abstract

Geographic information system (GIS)-driven research, while relatively early in its tenure, has already reconceptualized the kinds of questions vetted by the Emergency Medicine (EM) researcher. This narrative review provides an overview of geographic information systems and identifies and discusses specific papers with differing methodologic approaches within the published GIS-driven EM literature. GIS applications within three discrete threads of inquiry are described: Access to Health Services, Spatial Epidemiology, and Proactive Resource Allocation. Future directions for GIS applications relevant to the EM researcher are identified.

Introduction

Geographic information system (GIS)-driven research, while relatively early in its tenure, has already reconceptualized the kinds of questions vetted by the Emergency Medicine (EM) researcher. This paper provides an overview of GIS as a tool and resource for the EM researcher. It includes a curated review of a selection of articles illustrating methodologic applications of GIS within the current EM literature. Given the massive reach of geospatial information systems across sectors, its exponential integration into research design in recent years, and its intrinsic interdisciplinary foundations, we conducted a focused review of the application of geospatial methods and highlight specific articles with methodologic applications most relevant to the EM researcher. We present a brief overview of GIS software as a tool followed by examples of its application in three areas of research: Access to Health Services, Spatial Epidemiology, and Proactive Resource Allocation. Each study and its contributions are represented in Table 1. We additionally highlight potential future applications.

Section snippetsA brief overview of GIS software

In its simplest form, GIS software provides a platform for data of interest to be populated on a map. Data that may not previously have been conceived as geospatial may become so when represented visually overlaid on a map. There are many variables that can be measured and presented geospatially that are of interest to the EM researcher – health exposures, socioeconomic data, location of physicians' offices and hospitals, incidence of diseases, and numerous health outcomes. Geospatial data can

Access to health services

Swift access to definitive care for time-sensitive conditions holds obvious relevance to emergency clinicians, EMS agencies, and ED consultants. From well-defined concepts such as the trauma golden hour to stroke and STEMI alerts, immediate identification, stabilization, and timely transfer of care within a regional system are essential to maximizing the benefit of medical and surgical interventions. To this end, EM researchers have iterated upon and leveraged network analysis capabilities

Spatial epidemiology

A growing body of GIS-driven research in EM has sought to characterize the spatial distribution of disease processes in communities. Studies in this realm are notably hypothesis-generating pieces, seeking to better characterize multifaceted predictors of disease incidence and progression. They begin to flesh out a story of environmental context, dynamic environmental exposures, and interactions, in addition to previously identified individual risk factors.

GIS tools can be used both to

Proactive resource allocation

Thus far we have discussed the many potential and proven applications of GIS methods in estimations of ED access. We have additionally discussed the application of geospatial methods in describing differential spatial distributions of disease, with a potent shift in characterizing and contextualizing the communities in which disease-sufferers are embedded. A third thread of existing studies have further leveraged GIS technologies to proactively evaluate health resource disparities and potential

Future directions

This article summarizes GIS software and its potential utility to the EM researcher. While much prior work has been done in this field, there are many opportunities to expand the use of GIS within EM research. In 2025, post-pandemic ED utilization and ambulance utilization in certain regions remains high; prior studies, however, suggest that cases screened as low-acuity by EMS triage services are less likely to receive ambulance-based interventions despite using ambulance transportation [23,24

Conclusion

GIS-informed methodologies have strengthened the ability of EM to investigate its own operations, patient base, and the larger communities that EDs are embedded within. They have advanced health services research, deepened the characterizations of communities in which acute disease originates, and informed the planning and feasibility of interventions to curb disease progression and acute disease decompensation, and to reduce morbidity and mortality. GIS methods have demonstrated themselves to

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Joely Wilder Merriman: Writing – review & editing, Writing – original draft, Methodology, Investigation, Formal analysis, Conceptualization. John DeAngelis: Writing – review & editing. David Adler: Writing – review & editing, Conceptualization. Courtney M.C. Jones: Writing – review & editing, Methodology, Formal analysis, Conceptualization.

Declaration of competing interest

The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.

No financial support was received for this work.

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