Using Geographic Information System (GIS) to Develop Health Information System (HIS) for Srinagar City, Jammu and Kashmir

Abstract

Health Information System (HIS) is a GIS based information system that stores all information about health facilities – their name, location, category, no. of rooms, no. of male doctors, no. of female doctors, total no. of employee, no. of beds, qualification of doctor’s, Geographic coordinates of health Centers, availability of medicine, 24 hours service availability, maternity service, canteen facility etc. HIS allows the preservation of the information value of health Centers digitally and offers new exploitation possibilities, like the immediate connection of different kinds of data for analysis, or the digital documentation of these institutes for its improvement. The purpose of this study was to collect appropriate data of Health Centers around Srinagar city and to store the data into the Geodatabase built to manage them more efficiently. The data pertaining to these Health Centers was classified into different categories such as: Public Health Center, Sub Health Center, Allopathic Center, and private Hospitals. At total of 73 Health Centers were mapped out of them 13 were Public Health Center, 29 were Sub Center, 18 were Allopathic Center, 13 were Private Hospitals. The present study focuses on using Geographic information system and integrating with the Health information system to generate a baseline data for the planning, development and maintenance of these health facilities in Srinagar city.