The RedGems Information System: Climate, Environment and Public Health

Since 1999, a French multidisciplinary consortium on Spatial Surveillance of Epidemics (or S2E), has been developed, lead by the national space agency (CNES) and its subsidiaries (MEDES, MEDIAS-France, and CLS), along with french organizations involved with public health: i.e., Institut Pasteur, National Institute for Agronomic Research (INRA in french), Veterinary School of Lyon (ENVL in french). The consortium is to facilitate innovative environmental monitoring and surveillance schemes from space (Guell 2005) as well developing telemedicine (MEDES) and applications for public health improvement. An offspring of the consortium, following the French contribution during the Johannesburg Summit 2002, is the brand-new interactive health information system or RedGems (Re-Emergent Diseases Global Environment Monitoring from Space). The backbone of the site is tele-epidemiology which implies real-time monitoring of environment and intensive use of processed high resolution SPOT-5 images. The site is to contribute to the development of early warning systems (EWS), health information systems (HIS) and risks’ mapping using new tools and processed data and products obtained from space. It is believed that this new initiative will help tackling the upcoming public health challenge associated with climate variability/change, and contribute to capacity building and multidisciplinary networking worldwide.