Better mapping means better healthcare

• To meet the growing demand for spatial analytics, Esri is extending its long-standing strategic collaboration with Microsoft.
• Microsoft Fabric announced it will accelerate time to insights and reveal unexplored patterns, trends, and connections through the integration of spatial analytics from Esri’s ArcGIS software. 
• Esri’s ArcGIS integration will allow data to flow across an organisation, whether working from Microsoft OneLake, Microsoft Power BI, or their ArcGIS environment.

From facility management and standard healthcare operations to emergency preparedness plans, GIS offers a common reference point for shared metrics, measures, and goal tracking, which allows for more informed decision-making and smoother management. It can be used to model and predict the potential impact of catastrophic events such as natural disasters, disease outbreaks, or other emergencies, enabling healthcare systems to plan and respond more effectively. Through this technology, a hospital can strengthen the coordination and response to emergency operations, ensuring no patient falls through the cracks. Whether skies are grey or blue, GIS technology offers opportunities to provide better healthcare. What follows is an example using GIS to reimagine a routine practice.

Homecare route optimisation 
Homecare route optimisationIn the US, Esri partnered with a health service company to improve route optimisation for homecare visits. Staff felt that inefficient routes were increasing travel times unnecessarily and limiting the number of patients they could visit in a day, while also impacting the quality of care for the patients they did visit.   

Using ArcGIS technology, Esri’s analytics and programme teams developed a pilot process to feed scheduling data into route optimisation algorithms, which generated the most efficient distribution of appointments and routes, including which clinicians should visit each patient. 

In just five months, the pilot helped programme managers reassign more than 300 appointments along 200 routes, and the GIS-optimised schedules saved clinicians over 2,000 miles and 45 driving hours. This amounted to a 10% decrease in drive time across the routes changed. That extra time meant that more patients could be seen in a day, and higher quality of care could be delivered. Initially piloted in Texas, Esri is now planning to scale this solution across the US.

Este Geraghty, Chief Medical Officer, Esri, said: “This pilot is just one example of why GIS should be an indispensable element when planning any healthcare journey. While every healthcare journey is unique, when viewed from a macro perspective, these individual pathways reveal patterns, gaps, and opportunities that can be addressed to create a more resilient healthcare system – a system that is convenient and accessible for all, and ensures everybody gets the care they need, when they need it. GIS has a vital role to play in developing these systems.” 

-ENDS-