HGIS: A healthcare-oriented approach to geographic information systems

Abstract

The healthcare sector is rapidly changing to incorporate new technologies Antoni that enable the collection of unprecedented amounts of data. New paradigms such as mobile and smart healthcare are founded on these new technologies, such as the IoT, and the data they collect are no longer only medical but, instead, they refer to contextual information with spatio-temporal features. Also, new data processing techniques, such as process mining, are gaining attention and are reshaping the landscape of healthcare information systems. In this article, we concentrate on Geographic Information Systems and propose HGIS: a comprehensive, healthcare-oriented, GIS architecture to support the integration of heterogeneous data with spatio-temporal features. Moreover, we comment on initial results obtained from a proof-of-concept implementation developed by Xarxa Sanitària i Social de Santa Tecla, a large healthcare provider in the south of Catalonia.