Health Atlas Ireland: Open source mapping, database and statisti

Acronym of the case:

Health Altas Ireland

Web address of the case:

http://www.healthintelligence.ie

Country of the case:

Ireland

Posting Date:

30 April 2008

Last Edited Date:

08 July 2009

Author:

Xavier Heymans (Zea Partners)

FLOSS | gis | PloneGov

Type of initiative

Project or service

Case Abstract

Health Atlas Ireland is an open source application developed to bring health related datasets, statistical tools and GIS together in a web environment to add value to existing health data. The application enables controlled access to maps, data and analyses for service planning and delivery, major incident response, epidemiology and research to improve the health of patients and the population. Health Atlas Ireland is built upon open source software allowing it to capitalize on worldwide expertise without software licensing cost. Web access to powerful statistical, geographical and database components provide a cost-effective solution to health intelligence. Health Atlas is a â€˜voyage of discoveryâ€™ for health service planning and health event data analysis. The purpose of the system is to help answer questions related to health events, emergency response, health services and demographics, initially in the Republic of Ireland and eventually worldwide as related to Irish Health Services.

Description of the case

Domain

eHealth

Topic

Electronic health records | Health portals | Health risk management | Hospital information systems | Regional/national Health Information Networks

Sector

Communication (infrastructure) | Healthcare

Start date - End date

January 2006 (Ongoing)

Date operational

January 2007

Target Users

General public

Target Users Description

Health Atlas is one of the few projects focusing on the whole health administration at the national or regional level.

Scope

National

Status

Operation

Language(s)

English

Policy Context and Legal Framework

Good information governance is assured through adherence to legislative requirements; inclusion of statistical data only, user training; role-based access with restriction to relevant datasets/subsets; signed information governance undertaking; disallowing record linkage; and deployment of strict security technologies.

Project Size and Implementation

Type of initiative

IT infrastructures and products

Overall Implementation approach

Public administration

Technology choice

Standards-based technology | Accessibility-compliant (minimum WAI AA) | Open source software

Funding source

Public funding national

Project size

Implementation: €1,000,000-5,000,000

Yearly cost:

€300-499,000

Implementation and Management Approach

Health Atlas Ireland is a joint Health Service Executive and academic initiative. In the absence of an off-the-shelf solution, a new system was designed and developed. A EU restricted tendering process selected OpenApp, a Dublin base Open Source SME, and Siemens Ireland as development partners. OpenApp was subsequently awarded full project development responsibility.

Grant aided by the Health Research Board, the Atlas is custom built by the public health sector in partnership with two universities. The close collaboration with OpenApp brings in technical expertise on open source software and the ability to smoothly integrate within the project state of the art technologies.

Health Atlas Ireland enables "joined up thinking" within and between agencies. The open source design has an international potential. Ongoing development means that additional functionalities will be progressively put into production.

The project is supported by a number of Irish Public Organizations: the Health Information Unit (HIU), Health Intelligence, Population Health, HSE in collaboration with the Health Protection Surveillance Centre, UCD, NUIM and DCU. Excellent collaboration both within and outside the HSE including OSI, CSO, AnPost/ GeoDirectory, the Universities, ESRI, National Cancer Registry, Road Safety Authority, National Roads Authority, and An Garda SÃochÃ¡na, assist the project.

Technology solution

The system is build on the best of breed open source software components and integrating them in a manner that delivers a seamless system view to the end user. The popular open source methodology of â€˜release early, release oftenâ€™ fits well with the user interaction and uptake.

All applications developed within Health Atlas are web-based and directly accessible trough a browser. As a consequence, no other additional investments are required to any group of users (inside the public administration or for the citizens). In other words, any user can access the Health Atlas applications with his login and a password.

Health Atlas is based on Zope, an open source application server. Zope is entirely compatible with WAP standards, which allows anybody not only to consult Internet sites from a mobile phone, but also to work on applications. This technology also allows interconnection between published information, electronic agendas, etc.

The system has been delivered in 5 phases to date:
1. Basic data selections and map rendering from census and electoral divisions
2. Add health datasets
3. Add A0 printing, manual data upload, and statistical tests
4. Integrate geoDirectory and add network analysis capacity
5. Refine security, usability and performance

Impact, innovation and results

Economic effects

€1,000,000-5,000,000

Impact

Health Atlas is an innovative project that greatly improves the quality and the efficiency of services delivered by health services. It is easily transferable to similar foreign authorities and its potential for replication is enormous. The project opens the way to international software collaboration. The development of such software sharing initiatives helps underpin the sustainability of public services and makes a real difference now and into the future.

It is easy to show on tables or maps as numbers, colors or symbolization demographic patterns; hospital activity; service locations and catchments areas; and health patterns. GeoDirectory is embedded so addresses can be pin pointed on a map. Drug prescribing, financial and human resources, disease registers, source allocation, quality of care, travel times/distances, and environmental data will be added together with a public view.

Aspects of the Atlas we would like to highlight are the following:
> Presentation - Presents data in a standard Web Browser as charts and maps without requiring plug-ins.
> Analysis - Analyses raw data, supports small number suppression, statistically processed data supports multivariate cartograms, allows drill down to small area and point data.
> Open Source - Developed exclusively in open source software: R, GRASS, PostGIS, Mapsever, Zope3, OpenLayer. The development and production environments also utilize many OSS components: Linux, Xen, OpenLDAP, Subversion.
> Trac Security - Ensures data protection through an information governance framework - role-based access depending on training/skill, agency, and need to analyze or view confidential data.
> Integration â€“ Integrates many disparate datasets and map sets:
- Many datasets â€“ census; hospital activity; cancer incidence; road collision locations, mortality, births, perinatal data; vaccine uptake. More being added monthly.
- GeoDirectory (national address database) â€“ generates point data map layers from address lists in csv or MS Excel formats.
- Supports upload of users point or polygon data from many format.
- Multiple map sources - Ordinance Survey Ireland raster, Ortho and Vector maps.
> Flexible Output â€“ Supports A0 to A4 map outputs in PDF and image formats, report templates, snapshots of queries, table export to csv or Excel.

Track record of sharing

Following a nomination for the Health Service Executive â€œ2007 achievement awardsâ€, Health Atlas Ireland won the Irish Public Service Excellence Award 2008. The project was selected among dozens projects for its innovation capacity and its technical perfection. It is an innovative project that greatly improves the quality and the efficiency of services delivered by health services.

Health Atlas Ireland is easily transferable to similar foreign authorities and its potential for replication is enormous. This project opens the way to international software collaboration. The development of such software sharing initiatives helps underpin the sustainability of public services and makes a real difference now and into the future.

From the start, Health Atlas Ireland was designed for collaboration. A project goal is to share information and data across public organizations, medical institutions, doctors, researchers and the public. Addressing efficiently the need for collaboration, Health Atlas Ireland resulted in a scalable design and a number of generic tools easy to use by non-technical people.

The project leaders are also actively looking to develop international collaboration. In 2007, Health Atlas Ireland joined PloneGov. This initiative aims to create a platform of open source e-Government project in order to ease information, best practices and software sharing. PloneGov involves developing software applications by and for public administrations, enabling them to benefit from greater technological independence and together build tools that are truly suited to their needs.

The PloneGov initiative, started mid 2007, already won 3 awards: Paris, Grand prix du Jury, LutÃ¨ce d'Or 2007; Lisbon, Finalist, European eGovernment Awards 2007; Brussels, Good Practice label, ePractice 2007.

Lessons learnt

Lesson 1 - Be open to collaboration from the start

Lesson 2 - Use proven methods of project management and methodology.

Lesson 3 - The popular open source methodology of â€˜release early, release oftenâ€™ fits well with the user interaction and uptake. All applications developed within Health Atlas are web-based and directly accessible trough a browser.

Lesson 4 - Multltidisciplinary team. Health Atlas Ireland project team counts on a vast range of complementary skills from Public Sector organizations, academics and providers with a strong focus on SME. The project team should have strong focus on usability to facilitate the technology uptake, while multidisciplinary expertise for is required to develop such a complex solution.

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