title: The use of geographical information system in health sector.
abstract: The provision of health care has undergone radical changes during the last years. Geography plays an important role in understanding the dynamics of health, as well as the reasons why a disease is spreading. In general, a Geographic Information System (GIS) is based on the same principals with a traditional relational database. The main idea behind this study is the methodological approach as far as the implementation of a real- time electronic healthcare record is concerned, for the descriptive statistical analysis that uses geographical information to identify spatial data related to accidents. The purpose of developing such a health care record is to record the patients who were injured in accidents. The database that will be used for the development of the EHR is based on Microsoft Office 2007, which is considered to be one of the best tools for developing databases. The main table of the database includes the fields with demographics, ie name, surname, age, sex, address and place of birth. The primary key of the table Demographics is Patient_ID. The demographics from the table are connected to the table Admission with a relationship type one- to- many. The combination of these features in a graphic representation can be used to display the health problems on the map, so that the proper health policies can be applied. The results of the monitoring could be used as pilot instructions for spatial epidemiological analysis.
authors.affiliation: Department of Nursing University of Athens, Greece.
authors.forename: Aggelos
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Mechili
authors.affiliation: Department of Statistics University of Aegean, Greece.
authors.forename: Stelios
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Zimeras
authors.affiliation: Department of Nursing University of Athens, Greece.
authors.forename: Konstantina
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Al-Fantel
authors.affiliation: Department of Nursing University of Athens, Greece.
authors.forename: Marianna
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Diomidous
mesh_terms: D000059:Accidents / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D057286:Electronic Health Records / Q000458:organization & administration*; D040362:Geographic Information Systems / Q000458:organization & administration*; D062306:Geography, Medical; D006115:Greece / Q000453:epidemiology; D006302:Health Services Research / Q000458:organization & administration*; D006801:Humans; D017146:Models, Organizational; D015995:Prevalence; D012042:Registries / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D062211:Spatio-Temporal Analysis; D014947:Wounds and Injuries / Q000453:epidemiology*