This simple innovation should not be underestimated as the applications of GIS are vast and continue to grow. Medical researchers use GIS to study connections between health and the environment. In the larger medical community, hospital administrators, pharmaceutical companies, managed care providers, and long-term care providers are starting to use GIS which offers enormous potential for improving services by organizing, using and distributing spatial information. GIS is useful for analyzing and visualizing any system that is spatial, for mapping a patients heart or brain, or showing a breakdown of diagnoses on a map of the body, or even indicating which beds on a hospital floor are occupied, for how long, and by whom. A map integrating cadastral boundaries and ownership with proposed new road alignments shows highway engineers optimal property acquisition.
Electrical engineers can manage their complex networks of power lines.
It is not surprising that utilities all over the world use GIS to manage their operations-maintaining pipelines and transmission lines, building and operating power stations, making service calls, responding to emergencies. Everything takes place in the context of, and is thus manageable according to, location. Fire and police departments can plan emergency routes. A GIS can be used to make maps-street networks, bus routes . Not just static maps either.