Health and Well-being in communities is a key topic around the world.

This focus, as well as a commitment to a more integrated community healthcare system, requires a better understanding of the community, potential changes and options, and the impact of these for future planning. The decisions required to asses, and implement change need to be based on insight, utilizing innovative approaches coupled with understanding and effective use of data.  

As budgets and resources become tighter, improved evidence based decision making becomes more important in order to deliver maximum benefits and transform the health of our communities. Designing better integrated healthcare services means gaining a better understanding of the community.

 Geo-spatial analytics and visualization is a key capability for enabling this process, while also maximizing transparency and collaboration. This innovative technology leverages location and spatial proximity as well as geographical and demographic context to give essential insight and visualization. This directly enables more effective commissioning and service delivery.

The ability to visualize, analyze and present community healthcare data with geographic context provides a better understanding of demand and service provision, both now and in the future. 

Geospatial analysis is provided by GIS platform tools that allow analysis of data on, for example, location of: doctors surgery’s, pharmacies, homes of attendances and admittances, along with population distribution and geographic prevalence of long term condition situations, demographics and deprivation. These factors can be combined with forecasting models and presented in a visual way that aids insight and communication. The list of data that could be analyzed is almost endless, and the health and social care sector is extremely rich in data.

Presentation using GIS of both data and analysis in a meaningful and informative way to the appropriate end user at the appropriate time helps colleagues deliver better outcomes for patients, stakeholders and the public through enhancing and communicating across public health, service commissioning, social services and service delivery.

-Business Mapper Team