State of nation's health on call

By RICHARD WOOD

Health agencies and the public can now zero in on areas nationwide and take the pulse of communities.

The Health Ministry's Public Health Observatory site provides detailed disease and mortality information without identifying individuals.

The site, developed by the ministry's public health intelligence unit and launched today, is financed through the Institute of Environmental Science and Research and hosted by geographical information system supplier Eagle Technology.

Hospital admissions, mortality and cancer registry information is provided by the ministry's health information service, and Statistics NZ provides geographical census data and the Wellington School of Medicine furnishes a "socio-economic deprivation index".

Ministry spokesman Dr Chris Skelly said the system aimed to support public healthcare decision-makers and provide consistency so that everyone in the field was working from the same information.

Another goal was to inform the general public and promote debate.

"We have millions and millions of dollars worth of data but it's trapped," said Skelly.

"You get this bottleneck with professional analysts not being able to do enough analysis."

Health organisations can download the data to their desktop computers, where they can use ESRI ArcGIS software to analyse it in detail.

Many organisations have this software already, but a free viewer called ArcExplorer is also available.

Skelly said ministry and sponsors' logos had been left off the system, so if other organisations such as ACC or Plunket wanted to join they could use the work already done.

The system builds on experience gained creating the Public Health Early Warning (Phew) system for communicable diseases. That site began in 1998 and took 18 months.

The Observatory site was developed in five months, and has been under trial since December.

Skelly said the project cost "six figures" but was one-tenth of the cost of a similar project in Canada that was eventually cancelled.

A source told the Herald the cost was about $100,000.

Public Health Observatory

Public Health Early Warning System