Towards evidence-based, GIS-driven national spatial health information infrastructure and surveillance services in the United Kingdom

Abstract

The term "Geographic Information Systems" (GIS) has been added to MeSH in 2003, a step reflecting the importance and growing use of GIS in health and healthcare research and practices. GIS have much more to offer than the obvious digital cartography (map) functions. From a community health perspective, GIS could potentially act as powerful evidence-based practice tools for early problem detection and solving. When properly used, GIS can: inform and educate (professionals and the public); empower decision-making at all levels; help in planning and tweaking clinically and cost-effective actions, in predicting outcomes before making any financial commitments and ascribing priorities in a climate of finite resources; change practices; and continually monitor and analyse changes, as well as sentinel events. Yet despite all these potentials for GIS, they remain under-utilised in the UK National Health Service (NHS). This paper has the following objectives: (1) to illustrate with practical, real-world scenarios and examples from the literature the different GIS methods and uses to improve community health and healthcare practices, e.g., for improving hospital bed availability, in community health and bioterrorism surveillance services, and in the latest SARS outbreak; (2) to discuss challenges and problems currently hindering the wide-scale adoption of GIS across the NHS; and (3) to identify the most important requirements and ingredients for addressing these challenges, and realising GIS potential within the NHS, guided by related initiatives worldwide. The ultimate goal is to illuminate the road towards implementing a comprehensive national, multi-agency spatio-temporal health information infrastructure functioning proactively in real time. The concepts and principles presented in this paper can be also applied in other countries, and on regional (e.g., European Union) and global levels.

Spatial Disparity of HIV/AIDS Service Providers: The Case of Miami-Dade County

“…Program managers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have increasingly recognized the potential of GIS to organize and analyze information about HIV prevention services (Hanchette, Gibbs, Fogarty, & Bruhn, 2005). GIS has been adopted in the health care field to show the results of complex analyses (Richards, Croner, Rushton, Brown, & Fowler, 1999) and to assist in evidence based practices by community health organizations (Boulos, 2004). GIS provides useful tools to assess geographical access to health care services, a comprehensive review of which is covered by Graves (2008) and Higgs (2004).…”

“…The location of service providers is an important element in patients’ accessibility and usage of health and social services. Research on the geography of health and social services has focused on the diffusion of physicians and other health care resources across different locations (Goodman, 2004; Guagliardo, 2004; Joseph & Phillips, 1984), intra- and inter-urban differences in service provision (Heckman et al, 1998; Hendryx et al, 2002), and the implications of the geographic disparity on health expenditures (Hirth, Tedisch, & Wheeler, 2001). Spatial disparity in terms of geographical inaccessibility is an additional barrier for equitable access to health care services faced by patients of minority groups like African Americans and Latinos, who already face disproportionate problems such as limited or no insurance coverage, cultural and linguistic obstacles, and the feeling that they are not being treated with respect by health care providers (Collins et al, 2002; Higgs, 2004; Hogue, Hargraves, & Collins, 2000; Smedley, Stith, & Nelson, 2003; Waters, 2000).…”

A geographical perspective on access to sexual and reproductive health care for women in rural Africa

“…Provider-to-population ratio, or physician-to-population ratio, has long been used to measure geographical access to health services (Guagliardo, 2004; Wang, 2012). Usually, the ratio can be calculated using population/physician data aggregated by administrative units such as county or city.…”

“…Usually, the ratio can be calculated using population/physician data aggregated by administrative units such as county or city. This traditional measure has raised a lot of criticism mainly because it fails to account for the variation in spatial access within administrative boundaries and the interaction between provider and population (Guagliardo, 2004). Also, it might not be appropriate to define the catchment area of health facilities using prespecified spatial units because health service areas usually overlap rather than are separated by distinct boundaries.…”

Incidence of Violence Risk Mapping Using GIS: A Case Study of Pakistan

“…GIS is potentially powerful resource for many reasons including their ability to integrate data from various sources to produce new information, and their inherent visualization functions, which can promote creative problem solving and sound decisions with lasting, position impacts on people's live [7] [8]. Mostly researchers consume GIS to pinpoint violence high risk areas [9].…”