Virtual Earth – very real event

Sophisticated computer mapping technologies are transforming the way we experience the world around us and, in healthcare, making it easier to map epidemics, identify business trends and direct people to outpatients. Nick Saalfeld highlights some recent developments ahead of an event at Microsoft’s UK headquarters in Reading that will explain even more.

Getting computers to give us useful information about the real world around us has been a recognised challenge for many years. Now the efforts of many companies in this field, Microsoft included, are slowly coming bearing fruit, thanks to two giant leaps:

• Powerful mapping technologies such as Microsoft’s Virtual Earth mean that data can be overlaid onto maps to provide meaningful information at or about a particular place.

• The newfound sophistication of mobile phones means that the younger generation (at least) are carrying powerful computers around in their pockets.

The magic of mapping

The applications of this ‘geospatial’ information in healthcare are plentiful. In the US, Microsoft’s Amalga product, which links vast repositories of medical information, has already been used successfully to plot the incidence and then the likely propagation of an epidemic.

Similarly, by plotting any number of layers of data onto a map, resources managers can generate a ‘heat map’ of service provision. Consider, for example, a map of the UK. Overlay onto it a set of population densities. Then overlay a map of cancer services.

From this, we could probably make a meaningful, visual guess at the effectiveness of provision in each local area. Of course, we could then bolt on additional socio-economic and transport data sources to refine the view further.

Less dramatic, but still very useful for patient welfare, is the ability to give patients in the UK’s dispersed and often complicated healthcare estate clear directions to an individual point of treatment. Missed appointments cost the service dearly, and plenty of those are caused by patients simply getting lost.

Virtual Earth embedded in NHS Choices

That’s why Virtual Earth, Microsoft’s mapping system, has been deployed by NHS Choices - the flagship entry point for delivering healthcare services online – for its ‘Site Search’. Here, for example, is the map of GPs in my corner of South London. As Microsoft Virtual Earth solutions specialist, Vikas Arora, says: “Knowing precisely where they need to go offers enormous security and peace of mind to patients under the stress of ill health.”

You can learn more about Virtual Earth in our article discussing its applications in the health service, but there are even more exciting new technologies on the horizon. Microsoft’s Johannes Kebeck is one of the world’s leading experts on Virtual Earth implementation, and will be demonstrating some of these new opportunities at a live event on Friday 6 March, at Microsoft’s UK headquarters in Reading.

What’s round the (virtual) corner? Sneak Peek!

To give you a hint at what’s on offer, consider Microsoft Tags – which again take the power of computing out into the real world. A tag is rather like a barcode of coloured triangles which can be printed anywhere – on posters or signposts, for example.

A user can take a picture of the tag with their mobile phone camera, and the on-phone software will then convert this into a page of information – for example personalised directions around a hospital.

To hear about many more applications of Virtual Earth, and some of the technologies that make it work, join Mr Kebeck for An Introduction to Microsoft Mapping Platforms.