Improve Of Health Care Systems in Subareas of Saudi Arabia by GIS

Abstract

This paper shows how Geographical Information Systems (GIS) can be used to support health planners and demands on a micro-scale and explores the possibilities of using GIS for health care services in hospitals at Saudi Arabia subareas. GIS has several useful functions and tools that can be used in health planning field. The first part of this paper explains the issues that affect a local health care planning and monitoring of catchment area and facilities management. Each one of these issues is covered using several GIS functions including network analysis and spatial data analysis. The second part defines GIS and its possible application in the health care field. In this section, the relevant GIS functions have also been explained. The third part of this paper discusses the created and implemented a GIS application models, which is made for a local health care centre in Makkahh region and Taif city in Saudi Arabia. All the produced models can be applied on any private or public hospital in Makkahh region  and Taif city. They can be used to build a spatial decision making support system for hospitals in Taif region and serves five local health services neighborhoods named as Turabah, Al-Khurma, Rania, Zulam and Al-Moya. In this paper; the former is used to produce drive-time hospital service area and the route is applied at the selected hospital to calculate the size of its served demand. Finally; in this work, three sets of GIS models have been produced. These are catchment area; patient profile and patient distribution; and patient flow models. The results of GIS provided by the combined different entities based on their common geographic occurrence makes it a very valuable tool in epidemiological research, disease surveillance and monitoring. Some recent applications of GIS include vector borne diseases, water borne diseases, environmental health and modeling exposure to electromagnetic fields. Also, our results suggest that GIS is highly relevant to meet the demands of outbreak investigation and response, where prompt location of cases, rapid communication of information, and quick mapping of the epidemic’s dynamics are vital. In this work the former is used to produce drive-time hospital service area and the route is applied at the selected hospital to calculate the size of its served demand. It is recommended that more studies should be done in this work; three sets of GIS models have been produced. These are catchment area patient profile and patient distribution and patient flow models. So, we think that such output of creating and implementing a GIS models are produced to help a local health planners in their health care decision making output.

Keywords: GIS; Health planners; network analysis; hospital served demand; spatial data.