Big Data and WebGIS for Formulating Health Care Policy in India

Abstract

Lack of strategic framework in service delivery and decision making remains a void in health care, especially in developing nations. Online social media (OSM) can be an appropriate tool in raising awareness, issuing warnings and retrieving information regarding health issues. This study proposes a web-based health Geographic Information System (GIS) by utilizing a fabrication of OSM sources like government data, news media and Twitter data. Web crawlers were developed to retrieve the historical datasets from the archives of the data sources. The processed data is represented geo-spatially using a developed WebGIS system. The sequential computation-driven system integrating spatial extensions of PostgreSQL database and OpenLayers allows us to analyze health-related information, conduct spatiotemporal queries, and generate spatial density distribution maps to determine the disease hot spots and visualize space-time connections at a local scale. The outcomes can support the agencies in framing healthcare-related policies based on geoinformation intelligence and data analysis on various datasets including social media. It can further pave the way towards an e-governance system for efficient healthcare service delivery to every section of the society.