Using GIS for planning public general hospitals at Jeddah City

الملخص EN

Geographical Information Systems (GIS) are considered as an important and useful tool in planning and evaluating any health care system.

Today, GIS has been applied at several health care studies.

The applications are classified into three main groups which are spatial changes in health status, spatial epidemiology, and health care facilities accessibility and utilization.

The first part of this research discusses each one of these groups and their relevant GIS applications.

The second part illustrates one example of GIS application for evaluating general hospitals accessibility in Jeddah City.

For this application, the standard criteria of Saudi Arabia that define the health care locations were applied on hospitals locations in order to determine their levels of accessibility.

Network analysis, which is one of GIS modules, is used to produce the required models.

The local health authority can use the results of this application for planning further hospital services in Jeddah City.