Schuurman Nadine, Leight Margo, Berube Myriam
Department of Geography, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, Canada.
Int J Health Geogr. 2008 Sep 15;7:49. doi: 10.1186/1476-072X-7-49.
The creation of successful health policy and location of resources increasingly relies on evidence-based decision-making. The development of intuitive, accessible tools to analyse, display and disseminate spatial data potentially provides the basis for sound policy and resource allocation decisions. As health services are rationalized, the development of tools such graphical user interfaces (GUIs) is especially valuable at they assist decision makers in allocating resources such that the maximum number of people are served. GIS can used to develop GUIs that enable spatial decision making.
We have created a Web-based GUI (wGUI) to assist health policy makers and administrators in the Canadian province of British Columbia make well-informed decisions about the location and allocation of time-sensitive service capacities in rural regions of the province. This tool integrates datasets for existing hospitals and services, regional populations and road networks to allow users to ascertain the percentage of population in any given service catchment who are served by a specific health service, or baskets of linked services. The wGUI allows policy makers to map trauma and obstetric services against rural populations within pre-specified travel distances, illustrating service capacity by region.
The wGUI can be used by health policy makers and administrators with little or no formal GIS training to visualize multiple health resource allocation scenarios. The GUI is poised to become a critical decision-making tool especially as evidence is increasingly required for distribution of health services.
成功的卫生政策制定和资源配置越来越依赖于循证决策。开发直观、易用的工具来分析、展示和传播空间数据,有可能为合理的政策和资源分配决策提供基础。随着卫生服务的合理化,诸如图形用户界面(GUI)等工具的开发尤其有价值,因为它们能帮助决策者分配资源,从而服务最多的人群。地理信息系统(GIS)可用于开发能实现空间决策的GUI。
我们创建了一个基于网络的GUI(wGUI),以协助加拿大不列颠哥伦比亚省的卫生政策制定者和管理人员,就该省农村地区对时间敏感的服务能力的布局和分配做出明智决策。该工具整合了现有医院和服务、区域人口及道路网络的数据集,以便用户确定在任何特定服务集水区内,由特定卫生服务或相关服务组合所服务的人口百分比。wGUI使政策制定者能够在预先设定的出行距离内,将创伤和产科服务与农村人口进行映射,按区域展示服务能力。
卫生政策制定者和管理人员几乎无需或无需接受正式的GIS培训,就能使用wGUI来直观呈现多种卫生资源分配方案。尤其是在卫生服务分配越来越需要证据的情况下,该GUI有望成为关键的决策工具。