TY - JOUR
T1 - Enhancing healthcare accessibility measurements using GIS
T2 - A case study in Seoul, Korea
AU - Kim, Yeeun
AU - Byon, Young Ji
AU - Yeo, Hwasoo
N1 - Funding Information:
This research was supported by the MSIP (Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning, www.msip.go.kr), Korea, under the ITRC (Information Technology Research Center) support program (IITP-2016-R2718-16-0011) supervised by the IITP (Institute for Information & Communications Technology Promotion). This research was supported by the MSIP (Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning), Korea, under the ITRC (Information Technology Research Center) support program (IITP-2016-R2718-16-0011) supervised by the IITP (Institute for Information & communications Technology Promotion)
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 Kim et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
PY - 2018/2
Y1 - 2018/2
N2 - With recent aging demographic trends, the needs for enhancing geo-spatial analysis capabilities and monitoring the status of accessibilities of its citizens with healthcare services have increased. The accessibility to healthcare is determined not only by geographic distances to service locations, but also includes travel time, available modes of transportation, and departure time. Having access to the latest and accurate information regarding the healthcare accessibility allows the municipal government to plan for improvements, including expansion of healthcare infrastructure, effective labor distribution, alternative healthcare options for the regions with low accessibilities, and redesigning the public transportation routes and schedules. This paper proposes a new method named, Seoul Enhanced 2-Step Floating Catchment Area (SE2SFCA), which is customized for the city of Seoul, where population density is higher and the average distance between healthcare-service locations tends to be shorter than the typical North American or European cities. The proposed method of SE2SFCA is found to be realistic and effective in determining the weak accessibility regions. It resolves the over-estimation issues of the past, arising from the assignment of high healthcare accessibility for the regions with large hospitals and high density of population and hospitals.
AB - With recent aging demographic trends, the needs for enhancing geo-spatial analysis capabilities and monitoring the status of accessibilities of its citizens with healthcare services have increased. The accessibility to healthcare is determined not only by geographic distances to service locations, but also includes travel time, available modes of transportation, and departure time. Having access to the latest and accurate information regarding the healthcare accessibility allows the municipal government to plan for improvements, including expansion of healthcare infrastructure, effective labor distribution, alternative healthcare options for the regions with low accessibilities, and redesigning the public transportation routes and schedules. This paper proposes a new method named, Seoul Enhanced 2-Step Floating Catchment Area (SE2SFCA), which is customized for the city of Seoul, where population density is higher and the average distance between healthcare-service locations tends to be shorter than the typical North American or European cities. The proposed method of SE2SFCA is found to be realistic and effective in determining the weak accessibility regions. It resolves the over-estimation issues of the past, arising from the assignment of high healthcare accessibility for the regions with large hospitals and high density of population and hospitals.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85042458633&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1371/journal.pone.0193013
DO - 10.1371/journal.pone.0193013
M3 - Article
C2 - 29462194
AN - SCOPUS:85042458633
SN - 1932-6203
VL - 13
JO - PLoS ONE
JF - PLoS ONE
IS - 2
M1 - e0193013
ER -
