Tele-epidemiology is a methodological and application area of epidemiology concerned with the application of space-based systems (communication, Earth observation, positioning systems, Geographical Information Systems, biostatistics, etc.) in the study of the space and time distribution of health events or disease process in populations.
In this broader sense, the term includes applications of all space-based systems to the field of epidemiology. The use of a satellite communication system to support the investigation of an infectious disease outbreak, the use of a remote-sensing satellite to recognize and locate physical features on Earth (for example, an industrial plant suspected of a point source contamination of air or water) or non-visible characteristics of a land area (for example, calculation of the NDVI index in relation to the distribution of species of mosquitoes) to assess health risk in surrounding populations, or the use of global positioning satellites (GPS) to track the migration of animals to better understand possible route of malaria transmission are all illustrations of tele-epidemiology.
By recent usage, the term often designates the cross-disciplinary area linking specifically the applications of satellite technologies for earth observations (remote-sensing) to epidemiological research, health surveillance, and field support during health emergency response. In this restricted sense, the area of tele-epidemiology is closely related to the domain of landscape epidemiology. The United Nation Programme on Space Applications often refers to telehealth for applications linking communication systems (and for all health disciplines such as teleophtalmology, telesurgery etc...) and to "tele-epidemiology" in this more restricted sense.
Télé-épidemiologie, MEDES: [1]
United Nation Office for Outer Space Affairs: [2]
Redgems website [3]