GIS Application in health care facility Sumi Singh Symbiosis Institute of Geoinformatics SIMS Campus, Second Floor, Range Hills Corner Kirkee Cantt., Bhosle Nagar Pune-411020. Abstract: India is a developing nation, but it has tremendous potential in the field of healthcare and advanced medical care. The medical services are well established in the metropolises and now patients from neighboring countries as well as developed countries have been opting for medical treatment in India due to expertise of our doctors and relatively less expensive medical facilities. Yet, ironically, on the other hand these facilities are not available to our country men the less developed area of the country sides and lack of such facilities. GIS can be effectively used as tool for decision making in relation to optimum gainful utilization of available medical resources in far flung areas. A correlation between populations effected by different diseases, their areas, necessity and availability of medical resources to treat such patients, and establishment of existence geographic pattern, if any, can be worked out by application of GIS. Further, GIS would assist us in better linking of environmental, demographic and temporal factors with the health issues to understand causes for such health hazards. The paper would focus on medical service management and provision of paper health care with optimum utilization of available sparse resources in remote areas, integration of multifarious data sets with spatial and statistical attribute to predict the affected areas and generate a disease control model, and create models for further research. It would enable us to understand current limitations of medical facilities and resources and lead us to a solution to overcome this contemporary data with aid of GIS. This would also enable us to combine contemporary data wit spatial data to provide better medical facilities to the needy people in rural and outstretched areas. Introduction: Geographic information System (GIS) is a computer system for analyzing and mapping just about anything, moving or stationary (ESRI). A GIS integrates common database Operations, such as query and statistical analysis, with the ability to see how data relates in space and time. The maps produced with a GIS are useful showing places and the event that occur there, like outbreaks of disease. They are useful for analyzing and visualizing any system that’s spatial, for mapping a patient’s heart or brain, for instance, 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. Health care facility is the geographic study in medicine, maps the progress of diseases, famines, toxic spills, and other disasters. The Health care facility surveys, is important as it determine how many of a specific type of facility currently exist in an area, find the best locations for new ones, and determine how many to open. Despite of various experts available in India the majority of the population in different part of the country is suffering from various kinds of diseases and death rate are increasing day by day. This all because of lack of management of facilities, optimum route to the hospital, slum area development and lack of knowledge about technologies. Health care and GIS: The basic objective of health care facility is to track the various kinds of diseases that occur in various seasons and with various environmental factors to provide equal access to health care for all, with respective of ability to pay. This explains that every district should be protected from harmful diseases and this can be achieved by providing optimum facility to the community. These analysis and studies can be grouped into three main areas, which are
One of the facts about the health status is that it changes across the space. It is the duty of health care authorities to keep track and analyze the consequences of health status in different areas. Distribution of hospitals in different areas: Analyzing distribution of hospitals is an important criterion in health care facility because every category of population should get access to the hospital facility optimally. The health care department should take care about the infrastructure and facility provided in each area (equal distribution). Health care facility and utilization: This objective of health care facility is concerned with all the issues that are related to the locations. These issues include the optimal location of hospitals and clinics, the relationship between existing locations and health care needs and assessment of hospitals and the assessment of facilities. The planning of any health care system should have answers to the following important questions: What are the population needs for health care and how should resources be allocated to the population they are designed to serve? (Gatrell and Senior, 1999). Flowchart of Procedure:  Fig: Flow-Chart of Procedure Methodology: The methodologies proposed for the application in health care facility are as follows:
GIS Application in Health care facility uses Arc View spatial technology to integrate most common spatial data, such as statistic census geographies, population residing in slum areas, and the local health authorities. Analyzing population and what status of population is residing in which area it will easy to identify the consequences of various kinds of diseases. The Population are marked geographically i.e. how much population reside in which area and how many of them are suffering from what kind of diseases. Population health assessment including the ecological profile: The ecological setting of a population describes the social and physical environmental population. Routinely collected census data can be used to inform these broad advantages of the GIS. This information will help us to visualize industrial area, transport route that have developed, the dirty water that is there near small neighboring area, and other factors of studies that are affecting the population in different ways. Description of existing services utilization and distribution. This information will help us to determine the existing services and what are the other diseases that are operated under these services. It will also help us to analyze what status of community is accessing these services, and what is the optimum located area which is accessible. Proper distribution of hospital i.e. that area which are far flung from the city and are highly accessible some city’s hospital, where causes of certain diseases are more and are not able to access the facility, there new hospital should be developed. Area is the main objective of distributing the hospital and other facility. Analysis of the interface between needs and existing services (gaps and redundancies) The diseases that were found that was mostly from the area which is far away from the city, poor area where there is lack of health cares facility. Analysis mainly carried out in the area where there is maximum outbreak of diseases and death rate is increasing day by day. There is a vast gap between existing services now in the city area and the rural area. It is very important to get recent advances in that area through geographical information and mapping technologies to create new opportunities for public health administrators to enhance planning, analysis, monitoring and management of health systems so that each and every person in the country get access to each and every facility including health services. Outcome evaluation. After analysis it is found that understanding the determinants of a disease, and its spread from person to person and community to community, has become increasingly global. But the facility that should be provided equally in distributed manner is yet not achieved. This is what this project will help the government institution to work on this problem and will help to analyze where to build new hospital so that every community of the country get all the facility in reasonable rates. Case Study: The area that has been considered in this project is Pune city and neighboring rural areas where the hospitals which are situated on the boundary have the cases which are of remote areas that are outside Pune city. The digitized information of the Pune City and surroundings with Hospitals labeled:  The cases that have been found from these hospitals are as follows (Pune Municipal Corporation):  The above cases that have been found are from remote areas which are far away from the city and are not able to access that facility which are there in the Pune PHC (Public Health Centers). In 1993, the Pune Municipal Corporation of health department found nine cases of malaria out of ten which was basically due to lack of treatment in time. There are several other diseases that have been found in women like breast cancer which is again a very dangerous matter where it is required to have regular check up and this was a very vast problem where they have to travel long distance which is hardly possible and death rate was increasing. So, it is extremely important to study and understand these areas so that government people can think establishing new PHC’s over there and the statistic of causes of different kinds of diseases can go down. Conclusion: GIS aids in faster and vaster in better health mapping and analysis than the conventional methods. It manages spatial information – information about locations and their physical relations to each other, information about things that move through space, whether animals, humans, or clouds of poisonous gas. With more than 230 infectious diseases distributed throughout 200 countries, it’s become increasingly difficult for the researcher to accurately monitor their spread. The patterns of these diseases, some of them new, some of them reemerging, some ongoing, and other disappearing, change from area to area and season to season. By the accurate research can be completed, the results are often outdated and the situation become extremely out of control. With GIS, the researcher, the government body and other health institution can analyze the situation and can take the appropriate action with regard to public welfare. As mention above the today’s condition about our country, condition of rural and out -stretched area, this project will enhance the GIS technology and with the aid of GIS it would enable us to understand current limitations of medical facilities and resources and to overcome this contemporary data. References:
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