Episode 18: Highlights on Health GIS with Loma Linda University Health

April Moreno 0:04

dcasters.com/grad School Fair: 2022

And we're still here at the Esri User Conference here in San Diego. Currently speaking to Loma Linda University we have Chris Olson and we also have Shawn Granada from Loma Linda University Health. Welcome. Thank you so much for joining us.

Chris Olsen 1:36

I've been in GIS for about 16 years now. Started at ESRI actually was at ESRI for 12 years. And then Melinda and been there for three years. And I work as the GIS administrator. So we're

April Moreno 1:49

speaking directly to the source of who works in GIS at Loma Linda, that's great. Absolutely, and so on. Please tell us about yourself.

Sean Granata 1:56

Sure. I'm the program manager for the location services team. And I've been in GIS for about 14 years now. Because also former history worked in professional services there. And I found a passion for public health and health and human services. So that's why I chose to come to Loma Linda. My, I guess dissertation for, for my thesis for my master's was local, Linda, really enjoyed the organization and really inspired me to join the organization.

April Moreno 2:33

So tell us more about your thesis.

Sean Granata 2:35

it was nearly posters back in: 2014

April Moreno 3:12

Tell us a little bit more about what's going on at Loma Linda, in terms of GIS capacity, what are some of the projects that are happening right now. And I guess also tell us a little bit more about what is happening at the School of Public Health as it relates to GIS.

Chris Olsen 3:30

So right now, from a GI standpoint, we have a lot of projects going on. And we always try to, whenever we go into projects, we think about the patients that are involved. And so so a lot of the big projects that we're working on are patient facing. So we've got a big patient facing GIS app that's going to be coming out very soon, to kind of help patients with wayfinding and navigation through the hospital, through some of the buildings to be able to find, you know, appointments or different areas and rooms that they need to go to, just to make it a little bit easier for them, especially when they you know go from parking to through the buildings to you know where they need to go.

April Moreno 4:10

Campus GIS like a more on the ground level of GIS.

Chris Olsen 4:16

We're starting with the biggest, biggest two buildings that we have the new hospital tower or 17 floors and kind of go from there and kind of branch out to some of the clinics and more of the patient areas.

Unknown Speaker 4:33

We're gonna have a mobile application. So they can either use the native application on their phone or through the web browser. And then we're also going to have QR codes throughout the hospital so that they can kind of find out where they are no matter where they are in the hospital. Just to kind of help alleviate a lot of that tension and everything.

April Moreno 4:52

So yeah, a lot of it is just more visual, right? So okay, absolutely. Thank you. All right, any other projects at this Good public health, with GIS that you can tell us about?

Sean Granata 5:04

Well, the School Public Health has a lot of great projects going on, I think when it relates to public health for our team location services we offer, for example, the wellness map, which basically integrates with our electronic health record. And the application is able to pull down diagnosis ICD 10 codes from someone's chart. And from that it can filter out resources based on those diagnoses, and not only offer resources within their area, or wherever they choose, maybe it's around the workplace, and give them driving or walking directions to that. And eventually, that application will expand to referrals, and so forth, so that we can utilize GIS to help round out a patient's wellness and care.

April Moreno 5:53

I've been having this conversation a lot lately. Where is the partnership? Can you describe that connection between clinical and public health?

Sean Granata 6:03

Sure, so they share a lot of different things, especially in our the GIS realm. Like Chris said, We want to provide the best patient experience that we can, that's going to enhance the public health aspect of this because we have public health professionals working alongside our clinical staff. So not only getting them to where they need to be on time, their appointments, whether that be with political staff, or public health staff, but also getting them to the correct resources, and also expanding and enhancing patient quality and safety. For example, alongside Wayfinding, we do operational things like real time location services, we're kind of in the middle of that currently, where we will be tagging assets, we'll be tagging people as they come through for safety reasons. Things like infant monitoring, hygiene, safety monitoring, and also identifying where critical assets are like IV pumps, ventilators and so forth, so that staff can quickly identify them and get to the critical areas in a very short amount of time. Thank you.

April Moreno 7:26

So can you tell us about kind of the technology side of GIS? What is exciting to you in terms of what GIS technology is doing? Now? What are the capabilities? What are you excited about in terms of the future?

Chris Olsen 7:44

So I think that Loma Linda University Health, like we're on the cutting edge of what GIS is offering. So we're always staying up with the latest builds, we use ArcGIS Enterprise, we have two deployments of that we have an in house server, and then we also have Enterprise setup directly for our indoors applications, we really find that indoors is kind of expanding. And you know, Jack talked about in the plenary how, you know, we're taking GIS outside, bring it inside. And that's really the future of where all this stuff is going. And I think hospitals are a great application of that, where you can take those applications and bring them indoors, not only for patient access, but also employees that are looking for resources, like Shawn was talking about using RFID systems, but also just, you know, finding where you need to go or, you know, we're tracking where, you know, things are and just kind of even asset management, you know, you're talking about spaces, you're talking about square footages all this stuff is available in GIS. And so you can leverage that throughout different departments within the system, you know, through construction or through business opportunities or that kind of thing.

April Moreno 9:06

Can you tell us anything else in terms of GIS and health that you're particularly excited about?

Sean Granata 9:15

I'm currently pursuing a public health degree with full Melinda so I have a lot of insight into that school and what, especially in the Inland Empire, where we're currently residing, there's a lot of GIS surrounding things like AB succinic, teen and air quality. We have, of course, we had that big inland shift as far as logistics goes, and it's negatively affecting people in our area, which that we get at our hospital facilities and our clinics. So pursuing projects like that, and also any sort of future work with infectious disease. Pushing the code is not going away anytime soon. So At School Public Health has a lot of these great initiatives going where it's extremely exciting. And GIS has been a big not only an analytic tool, but also a community building tool. Or they're using GIS as a hub to really get a story across, get a message across to the community in games, as well as our legislators as well.

April Moreno: 10:24

The Inland Empire is very well known. I mean, maybe I'm biased because I went to school there as well. But Loma Linda is doing really great work county of San Bernardino is doing really great work with GIS technologies and patient care, a lot of data analytics that no one else is really doing right now. Thank you for your great work. It's definitely not going unnoticed. You all are standing out. And thank you so much for everything you're doing for that community. Thank you for joining us today. How can we learn more about your school and your programs?

Sean Granata: 11:01

The School of Public Health, GIS does have a website but they do offer a GIS certificate, mainly for brown public health. And if you go to lu.edu, you'll be able to see our course catalogs you'll be able to see many of our great programs, whether it be School Public Health, or maybe our School of Medicine or what have you. And if you're interested, they have a great admissions department that you can contact with any questions.

April Moreno: 11:29

Thank you so much for your time today for joining us on the public health networker podcast. Thank you for joining us today.

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