Spatial and Multidimensional Visualization of Jeddah Health Resources A Community Health Assessment of Jeddah City.

摘要

Jeddah public health resources are struggling to meet the demand of the large populations. The city is suffering from insufficient public health resources along with other health problem, like high rates of some disease, which resulted in an amount of dissatisfaction among some of the health facilities visitors. The absence of a comprehensive Community Health Assessment study of Jeddah public health resources and the fact that health resources are not meeting the needs of the large population created the need to conduct this study.;This is an exploratory study that will use the guidance of two frameworks, Mandala of Health and "Access as fit" theories, and take into account all public hospitals and primary clinics provided by the ministry of health (MOH). Availability and accessibility of MOH resources will be assessed according to the Saudi planning standards for the years 2006 -- 2010. Furthermore, health professionals' numbers will be assessed against the demand of some prominent disease cases in each census tract for the years 2006 -- 2010.;A multidimensional exploration of the data is needed to answer the queries of this study. Thus, Spatial OLAP Visualization and Analysis Tool (SOVAT) is utilized. This tool has the capability of integrating multidimensional databases to maps. It also answers complex queries easily and rapidly and gives results in maps, spreadsheets, and graphs.;The exploration resulted in determining that primary clinics are allocated in accordance with populations' densities with few exceptions. In addition, parts of the city were found to be lacking some facilities or health professionals while few parts were found to be over-served with resources. Finally, it has been found that there is a need to increase the number of hospitals. Additional patterns of the resources have been uncovered due to the multidimensional capability of SOVAT.;The tool proved to be efficient and established a much better comprehensive understanding of the health resources. Additionally, it helped interpreting the interaction between the dimensions of the "Access as fit" framework. Nevertheless, some technical skills were needed for a successful data preparation and integration. It could be implemented by MOH as few requirements must be met.