Towards Near Real Time Public Health Surveillance (A Decision Support System for Public Health Surveillance)

In recent years with increasing population and changing climatic conditions over the globe gave room to outbreak of different diseases, proper and timely handling of disease cases can result in saving many important human lives. Public health surveillance is the ongoing, systematic collection, analysis, interpretation and dissemination of data regarding a health-related event for use in public health action to reduce morbidity and mortality and to improve public health. Data disseminated by a PHS system can be used for immediate public health action, program planning and evaluation, and formulating research hypotheses. Timely access to disease related data and geographical location is very necessary for public health officials and decision makers in order to avoid mortality and morbidity rate in a particular area of interest (AOI). In this paper we propose and developed a web-GIS based system for public health surveillance about data collection and dissemination through internet. A database of disease cases has been created with six years of historical data from Chiang Mai province Thailand. This system efficiently provides the maps and charts in real time through internet-GIS concept for decision makers and public health officials for analysis and taking preventive actions.