GIS based Donor Information System

GIS based Donor Information System

Phone calls to friends and relatives with a great deal of anxiety are quite common during medical emergencies arising out of accidents or illness or other such medical conditions. Any help from unknown quarters comes as a big relief. But one is often caught scrambling during such critical times for much-needed information, the information regarding donors.

It is needless to emphasize the plight of those looking out for blood donors especially of rare blood groups during such medical emergencies. If such is the situation with information on blood donors, imagine the nightmare of those looking for information on donors of other types such as bone marrow, kidney, liver, lungs, eyes etc not getting the required information at the appropriate time. Everyday thousands of lives are lost for want of such critical information at the appropriate time. When lives are at stake, every second counts and words cannot describe the plight of the near and dear ones, running from pillar to post in locating the donors.

Geography or GIS for that matter has never been so closer offering a helping hand in our day-today life. Web based and even GIS based blood bank/ blood donor information systems are already the order of the day. But for some reason the concept has not extended beyond blood banks and blood donors into other types of medical donors like eye, kidney, bone marrow, lung, liver donors etc. and corresponding donor banks/ facility.

“Brain death” something hitting the headlines these days refers to the irreversible end of all brain activity (including involuntary activity necessary to sustain life) due to total necrosis of the cerebral neurons following loss of blood flow and oxygenation. Brain stem death (not whole brain death) is taken to be the significant indicator of death. Brain death may result in legal death, but still with the heart beating, and with mechanical ventilation all other vital organs may be kept completely alive and functional, providing optimal opportunities for organ transplantation. Most organ donation for organ transplantation is done in the setting of brain death. In some nations (for instance, Belgium, Poland, Portugal and France) everyone is automatically an organ donor, although some jurisdictions (such as Singapore, France, or New Zealand) allow opting out of the system. Elsewhere, consent from family members or next-of-kin is required for organ donation. (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_death).

With the success of organ transplantation as an effective modality of treating end stage disease of various organs, increasing numbers of organ transplants are being performed all over the world. However, this procedure requires a “donor” pool of either “living” or “cadaveric” donors. Since this pool is limited, the gap between “demand” and supply is widening, which is further hampered with the non-availability of information regarding this limited donor pool at the right time. In the context of organ donation “cadaveric” donation has largely meant “brain dead” or “heart beating” donors. Such cadaver organ donation no doubt requires a robust IT/GIS based operational support system as its backbone to effectively utilize such cadaver donors.

A final thought: For a moment let us close our eyes and imagine the plight of the near and dear ones scrambling for information on donors, during medical emergencies. How thoughtful it would be if a donor registered for eye donation breathes his last and a SMS with the donor ID to a centralised server with details regarding the place, date and time of death etc is dispatched by the kith and kin of the deceased. This SMS then triggers of a set of GIS analysis on the server based on parameters such as the list of recipients registered in the vicinity of the donor considering medical factors for organ donation along with the spatial separation between the donor, recipient and the transplantation facility. The end result is an alert to either to the recipient/ care taker/ medical facility with location details of the donor.

A new concept such as this GIS based donor information system definitely needs inputs and support from all quarters and needs to be experimented, given a deep thought to put in practice.

The donors may be living or cadaver, their hearts beating or not beating, but let our hearts beat as one for a GIS based Donor Information System!

Can GIS Save Lives?

Can GIS save lives?

Medical geography aka health geography, is an area of medical research that incorporates geographic techniques into the study of health around the world and the spread of diseases. It also includes studies on the impact of climate and location on an individual's health as well as the distribution of health services. Medical geography is an important field because it aims to provide an understanding of health problems and improve the health of people worldwide based on the various geographic factors influencing them. Health geography is the application of geographical information, perspectives, and methods to the study of health, disease, and health care (Wikipedia)

During the times of the Greek doctor Hippocrates (5th-4th centuries BCE), people have studied the effect of location on one’s health. For example, early medicine studied the differences in diseases experienced by people living at high versus low elevation. It was easily understood that those at living low elevations near waterways would be more prone to malaria than those at higher elevations or in drier, less humid areas (geography.about.com). Though the reasons for these variations were not fully understood at the time, the study of this spatial distribution of disease for sure was the beginning of medical geography. It was not until middle of 18th century when the cholera epidemic gripped London that medical geography gained significance.

During the last three decades, a powerful technology has quietly changed the way people view and live in their neighborhoods, towns, and cities. Most people remain unaware of GIS and its impact-an impact that is as far-ranging as it is useful-despite GIS having grown immensely in the last 15 years, despite hundreds of thousands of people now using the technology, and despite it affecting the daily lives of millions (ESRI).

Be it the pandemic killer swine flu or AIDS of the 20th century, the super power of GIS is its ability to add a spatial perspective to any data being analysed. This has always proved to be very useful to epidemiologists across the globe in elucidating patterns and relationships between the person, place, and time components of epidemiologist data. In addition, GIS technology has been an important tool for understanding and displaying disease or disease risk that are related directly to environmental exposure.

Today, medical geography has a number of applications as well. Since the spatial distribution of disease is still a large matter of importance, with GIS based maps playing a significant role in this field. Google Maps in the recent years has revolutionized the way in which information on several epidemics/ pandemics like swine flu, flu (Google Flu Trends) is delivered to general public.

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the United States for instance uses what they call the Atlas of United States Mortality to look at a wide range of health factors across the U.S. Data ranges from the spatial distribution of people at different ages to places with the best and worst air quality. The World Health Organization (WHO) features health data for the world with its Global Health Atlas. In India NATMO (National Atlas and Thematic Mapping Organisation) prepares Health and Diseases Atlas for India besides other organisations.

Though GIS has been playing a significant role in the field of medical geography, there are quite a few stumbling blocks/ limitations as well. They could be anything from accurately tracking the first incidence of a disease, the accuracy of data collected to confidentiality laws that can complicate the reporting of a disease.

A final thought: For a moment let us close our eyes and imagine the plight of our human race threatened with a plethora of heath related issues in this 21st century. Of what use could be any technology if it cannot reach and benefit the common public suffering in the veritable concrete jungles, the so-called cities and the remote villages of India? It is a pity that technologies such as GIS and many such applications do not see the light of the day, for one reason or the other. Let us explore ways to apply GIS to make our lives better!

Now, Can GIS save lives? The answer is: on the lighter vein, GIS has been my bread winner for several years now. GIS may not be the paragon of all virtues but it could be important as one of several measures for addressing the problems confronting the epidemiologist and the medical community in saving the human race, if applied in the right manner, at the right time.