One of the main issue of the
Colombo Municipal Council is to look after the sick population of the city by
providing this service at the door step of the community. This proximity medical
contact could be facilitated by locating the Medical Centres in such a manner that they cover all sectors within
the city limits. This function also enables the Colombo Municipal Council as
the service provider to track and maintain data relating to various diseases
that are prevalent in different locations within the ambit of the CMC.
The factors
contributing to the prevalence of such varying patterns of illnesses are
easily identified by way of maintaining the data relating to different
contributory factors. With this background it will be possible to dwell deeper
in to such attributes as the living conditions, environment, and other health
hazards that the community is exposed to.
In the
increasingly information-intensive environment of tomorrow's health care, the
role of GIS will have greater importance due to its abilities to integrate a
wide range of data sources, from legacy systems to image data, and to make
complex data more quickly and easily understood.
Geographical Information System is being used today to
address nearly all the world's problems including environmental protection,
pollution, health care, transportation, land use, national resources,
conservation, business efficiency, education, social inequities, etc. These are all fundamentally geographic
problems that can be visualized and analyzed with GIS. It is a new and important technology which
provides the scientific framework for geographic knowledge creation and
dissemination.
This is
especially true in the area of health care.
Local Authority Administrators
who are searching for innovative methods of management have begun to
recognize that GIS is a powerful tool that can help them with management
activities ranging from determining intervention strategies to formulating
health care reform. Through the
geo-coding process, GIS allows researchers to examine personal health data
spatially so patterns can be identified.
From the foregoing it can be concluded that the GIS
facility would provide the ideal basis for the Colombo Municipal Council to
optimize its Health Services to the community. Factors such as budgeting for
health services, maintenance of health related inventories, purchase and
control of drugs and most importantly disease patterns can be centralized with
a view to provide the best services at minimal cost.
Dr. N. WICKREMASINGHE
Chief Dispensary Medical Officer.
Health Curative Department