Granular Health Map

November 13, 2012 - 10:01 -- Patrick Choquette
Revision #8ForkRecommend a Solution

Using mapping services allows health system workers to better understand the whole of the systems in which they work. In order for that mapping to be useful, it needs to have enough granularity of information. Currently when you want to add information about health system structures to OpenStreetMap, your only option is to add a "hospital" which is an insufficient level of detail. OpenStreetMap doesn't allow for mapping health systems with enough granularity; everything is a "Hospital". 

Let’s work with Open Street Maps to define with more granularity the different levels of a health system so that Volunteers and their counterparts can map the health services available in their country. At least 4 levels are needed:

  • Advanced Hospital
  • Basic Hospital
  • Health Post
  • Health Hut

Additionally, there should be fields that allow you to add more information about the health structures:

  • Ambulance (Y/N)
  • Operating Block (Y/N)
  • CD4 testing (Y/N)
  • Size of catchment area
  • Private or Public
  • Staffing: Doctors, Nurses, Midwives, Community Health Workers, etc.
  •     

Lastly, there should be a way to map the catchment zone of the health facility.

Similar Projects and Resources: 

OpenStreetMap is a great starting point for this project: http://www.openstreetmap.org/

Next Steps and Sustainability: 

Health is one of the core sectors that Peace Corps works in, and if such a mapping system existed, this could be a valuable tool for Volunteers to use.  The initial roll out, Volunteers could actually create the maps for their countries, which could then be used by subsequent Volunteers, the communities, and the countries themselves. The tool would be made available on Peace Corps Knowledge Management Exchange as well as publicly.

Qualitative Impact: 
The more granular the understanding of services provided, the easier it will be to locate and provide health services when needed. It will also make it easier for Volunteers to understand how the resources are organized and how to tap into them appropriately during their work.
Quantitative Impact: 
At a minimum, 9000 Peace Coprs Volunteers -- should this be rolled out globally -- would have the ability to find the appropriate health resources and create mapping that would allow future Volunteers to find them.
Problem Definition Category: 

Comments

We are working on this in Berlin:

Initial goal is a map that displays hospitals as overlays, and use the advanced health facility tags such as http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Humanitarian_OSM_Tags/Humanitarian_Da...

Then we can add an option to edit them.  Anything, such as catchment areas, that is not a fit for OSM, perhaps we can have another data layer overlay... same format as OSM but separate database.

Initial source code:

https://github.com/filbertkm/hospital-map

Katie Filbert Dec 01, 2012

Here we go =)

We added hospitals in a database and display them as overlays.

The website uses bootstrap from twitter, css3 and jquery.

Using html5 we are able to know user postion and center the map.

Clicking on the marker of the ospital on the map a modal dialog shows up and details are displayed.

Here you can be redirected to a modification page, and if you are registred (volunteers) you are able to edit infos.

[Some backend parts aren't well developed, we will fix them soon]

https://github.com/mattia-beta/Hmap

mattia benedetti Dec 03, 2012

 

@Mattia great that you worked on it too. Can you set up a demo and/or screenshots/a screencast? We're curious to find out more about your solution!   Our demo is located at: https://github.com/hospital-map/hospital-map
Willi Müller Dec 10, 2012

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