I am hoping to encourage a discussion related to the future role of GIS in the health (NHS). As a researcher not only in usability I have a special interest in Health and Health inequalities.
It has long been my belief that GIS is under-utilised in the NHS. So whilst there are lots of new opportunities for Geo and Health - we need to identify what really needs to change to embed practice within the NHS. Whilst now more than ever before GIS is more affordable and more accessible with lots of useful data that can be applied to the health care setting - many barriers (social, p
olitical, technical, economical) still exist. The technical merits and low cost of Open Source Software are not enough to drive a georevolution within the NHS.
I see a number of the geospatial projects JISC have recently funded as having a future potential to aid decision-making in health. One of which is our project. Once the G3 project software is launched in October, I will develop a scenario around Geographic Concepts and health inequalities and hope that it will prove useful to health care professionals.
Ah yes I agree with that. In conversation I tried to help my sister-in-law make use of OpenStreetMap to create a map of a certain patient choice and the geographic distribution. She was amazed at what could be done with maps, but the easiest option was leaning towards just using Paint/Photoshop.
ReplyDeleteI think the trouble is they (generally) don't find it easy doing advanced IT tasks such as using maps, and they might not have time to get comftable with the IT with learning through trying. To help this I think some much easier tools & help need to exist. (something like G3?)