Abstract
Spatial epidemiology is considered one of the main GIS uses in healthcare research. The first part of this paper discusses the uses of GIS in the epidemiology field. Several worldwide cases are presented for the purpose of identifying the potentials and benefits of using GIS in epidemiology. The relevant GIS functions and tools are identified and divided into data-exploratory and data-modelling functions. The second part of the paper focuses on presenting a GIS application created for studying diabetes patients in Jeddah city, Saudi Arabia. The application covers three main epidemiological issues: (i) defining the spatial distribution of diabetes patients; (ii) finding spatial relationships between population density and diabetes locations, and (iii) modelling spatial variation of diabetes locations. Several GIS tools and functions are used for this application, including feature classification and feature selection. In addition, a GIS geostatistical analysis technique (kriging) is used to model the spread of diabetes patients at Jeddah city.