Paper Title
RECENT ADVANCESOF USING GEOSPATIAL TOOLS AND TECHNOLOGIES IN HEALTHCARE
Abstract
Abstract - Geospatial data have been playing an important role to describe the locations of individual health and public health and spread of diseases as well as the distribution of health services. These data provide an understanding of health problems in order to improve the health of people based on patterns of disease, spread of the diseases, and variations in morbidity and mortality rates, reflects the local environment. All healthcare issues are linked to spatial information on population's health, distribution of disease in an area, the environmental effect on health and diseases, accessibility to healthcare, and spatial distribution of healthcare providers and diseases. Doctors, practitioners and clinicians require the data of patents and surrounding environments which can be collected by wireless sensors, wearable sensors, satellite images, Global Positioning System (GPS), Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs)/Drones, Scanners, etc. These data can be stored in cloud environment and effectively analysed using geospatial technology, such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Geographic Information System (GIS) for various healthcare applications.
With the rise of Internet of Things (IOT) devices, more data can be collected to have a better understanding of healthcare related issues. The useof wireless sensors and technologies help in detecting the emergencies, more efficient vehicular routing and detailed information on nearby hospitals to provide treat the patients immediately. Data science has immense potential from predicting treatment outcomes to curing diseases and making patient care more effective. Geospatial technologies and IOT are becoming important tools in modern healthcare sector to examine the spatial and temporal trends in large scale epidemiological data, and diagnose the patients more accurately and save their lives.
The present paper deals with the various modern geospatial tools and technologies which are found to be very useful in various aspects of a healthcare system. The use of digital technology provides faster and reliable solution, serving a large number of people with minimum funds and efforts. Some application areas where the geospatial tools and technologies have benefitted the societies are briefly explained. At the end, some challenges and way forward are also discussed.
Keywords - Geospatial Tools, Healthcare, IOT, UAV, GIS, GPS, AI, Wireless Sensors.