Development Of Health Care Systems in Subareas of KSA Using GIS Concept

Abstract

The present study was directed to show how Geographical Information Systems (GIS) can be used tosupport health planning and demanding on a micro-scale and explore the possibilities of using GISfor health care services in hospitals in Saudi Arabia subareas. The first part of this work explainedthe issues that affect a local health care planning and monitoring of catchment area and facilitiesmanagement. Each one of these issues was covered using several GIS functions including networkanalysis and spatial data analysis. The second part defined GIS and its possible application in thehealth care field. In this section, the relevant GIS functions have also been explained. In response,alternative sources were used, such as Google Earth, printed maps and information gathered on theground by GPS. The third part discussed the creation and implementation of GIS application models,which was made for a local health care center in Makah Al-Mokaramah region and Taif city in SaudiArabia. All the produced models can be applied in any private or public hospital in Makkahh regionand Taif city. They can be used to build a spatial decision making support system for hospitals inTaif region and serves five local health services neighborhoods named as Tarabah, Al-Khurma,Rania, Zulam and Al-Moya. The most important results of this research were the determination ofgeographic locations of healthcare institutions, identifying ways and distances to reach the nearestaccess roads to these institutions. As well as being able to extract administrative regions on a largenumber of population, hospitals, health centers, number of beds, number of doctors and number ofnurses. One of the recommendations of this research the need of using GIS and GPS (GlobalPositional System) to determine the locations of health institutions on a number of sites.