- July 09, 2026
- By Renata Johnson
The University of Maryland will launch an online Master of Professional Studies program in geospatial artificial intelligence and healthcare in the Spring 2027 semester to prepare students to use advanced analytics to improve health outcomes and equity.
Students in the 30-credit program will learn to address complex global challenges, from how and where diseases are spreading, to which communities and individuals may need greater resources, by taking a deep dive into the intersection of AI, geospatial analytics and public health.
That interdisciplinary focus—the program is offered by the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences’ Department of Geographical Sciences (GEOG) and the Department of Health Policy and Management in the School of Public Health—makes the program unique, said Mengxue Li, a principal faculty specialist in GEOG who co-led its development.
The program, which is now accepting applications, aims to fill the need for skilled workers amid a digital transformation in the healthcare sector. Organizations are generating large and increasingly complex sets of health, environment and spatial data that can be leveraged to address health disparities and emerging threats.
Students in the program will gain expertise in geospatial sensing, machine learning and deep learning, with a curriculum that includes courses like “Spatial Analysis for Public Health,” “Web GIS for Public Health” and “Deep Learning for Geospatial Health Data.”
“GeoAI and healthcare fuses patient location data with machine learning to map disease outbreaks, predict environmental health risks, address access and health disparities by identifying neighborhoods lacking medical services, and promote preventive care by flagging patients who are at high risk for hospital readmissions,” said Clinical Professor Negin Fouladi of the School of Public Health. “This technology helps health systems anticipate where crises will happen and allocate resources exactly where they are most needed.”
Graduates will be prepared for a variety of roles, including health data scientists, spatial epidemiologists and GeoAI analysts.