USER STORY

Wits Health Consortium using ArcGIS for spatial analysis

Background about Wits Health Consortium – Department of Molecular Medicine and Haematology

The Wits Health Consortium (Pty) Limited (WHC) is wholly-owned by the University of the Witwatersrand, and has been in operation for the past 2 decades. WHC is the support operation through which the University – primarily its Faculty of Health Sciences – conducts research, manages donor-funded activities, pursues entrepreneurial innovation in health and supports clinical trials.

The Department of Molecular Medicine and Haematology (DMMH) is one of WHC’s many academic divisions. There are a number of institutes and units that also fall under the guidance of WHC. Together, these division and institutes/units aim to enable the pursuit of specialist research in the respective fields of expertise.

What initiated the use of the ArcGIS platform?

The value of data analytics, specifically spatial data analytics, within health care has necessitated the need for research to be bolstered by a GIS component. Esri South Africa  has proven to be the leading provider in GIS software that is affordable at a research level, and has the capacity to provide important analytical techniques that can drive health care forward.

Background of the project

The DMMH is an integral part of WHC, bringing together specialists across different fields of expertise, conducting research on major health pandemics (e.g. Tuberculosis, HIV, COVID-19). Research is aimed at identifying and addressing key components of the respective pandemics with the aim of mitigating the spread of disease, and contributing to the global initiatives of bringing an end to these pandemics.

The challenge

How to identify spatial attributes and trends in the data, in order to better understand the spread of disease and the efforts, such as ‘point of care’, that should be implemented in order to mitigate the spread of disease and to provide essential health care to people in need.

The solution

The ArcGIS platform, through Esri South Africa, has provided the necessary geospatial software in order to perform vital spatial analyses on national health care datasets, and has already aided in the implementation of important measures, contributing to the broader aims of the department and organisation. This has included spatial analysis in the form of optimised hot-spot analysis to identify areas with significant clusters in the data where there is high prevalence of disease. Currently, suitability analysis is being performed to identify the most suitable site locations for the implementation of ‘point of care’.

ArcGIS Pro has been used for performing spatial analyses, and we are already looking to integrate the use of ArcGIS Online, ArcGIS Story Maps, and ArcGIS Dashboards, to better assist the organisations research. Within ArcGIS Pro numerous tools, including spatial analyst and space-time pattern mining tools, have been used to perform analyses.

In conclusion

Esri technology has provided the means to conduct vital spatial analysis that is aiding the research and implementation of measures to strengthen the fight against the spread of disease, which is particularly pertinent in a South African context.

Disclaimer: The opinions or statements expressed herein are my own and should not be taken as the official opinion of Wits Health Consortium or the Department of Molecular Medicine and Haematology.