AAM and the Western Australian Department of Health are the proud recipients of the People and Community Award in the Western Australian Spatial Excellence Awards (WASEA) 2017.
The People and Community Award recognises products or projects that make a difference to issues that affect communities via ‘grass roots’ initiatives and/or educational programs, services or tools that permit the widespread adoption, use, understanding and access to spatially enabled products or services.
Daniel Harvey (Chair, SIBA WA), Ting Lin (Research Analyst Spatial Services, Department of Health WA), Anthony Walker (Geosolutions General Manager, AAM), Linda Sinclair (Acting Midwifery Director, Statewide Obstetric Support Unit) and Carly Lambert (Geosolutions Product Manager, AAM)
AAM collaborated with the Statewide Obstetric Support Unit (SOSU) and the Geospatial Services Team at the WA Department of Health Epidemiology Branch to design, develop and implement the Maternity Services Viewer (MSV). MSV is a modern, interactive web-based GIS tool which identifies all the relevant providers of maternal and newborn care services across the state of Western Australia. The MSV is an online, intuitive, easy-to-use tool that is easily accessible and readily available for busy clinicians.
In the works, SOSU sought to implement this in response to a clearly identified issue for rural mothers and/or newborns ‘falling through the cracks’ once they were discharged from tertiary or secondary care institutions, often resulting in ‘near misses’ with the potential to impact on health. There was a clearly identified knowledge deficit when discharging a patient pertaining to the awareness as to the available health services at/or close to the mothers’ discharge destination. This information is used to meet the immediate antenatal/postnatal requirements for the mother and/or her newborn baby.
Since its establishment in 2008, SOSU has been regularly visiting maternity and newborn service providers throughout the state to routinely review maternal and neonatal service provision and service gaps, as identified by clinicians and health service managers. A recurring theme has emerged of the need for improved communication between metropolitan and rural based maternity and newborn service clinicians. The provision of an avenue for maternity and neonatal care clinicians to operate with a higher level of understanding of the geography, service capabilities and limitations of rural health services was identified as something which could improve communication and coordination of care for rural maternity women and their babies significantly.
The Maternity Services Viewer (MSV) is simple, uncluttered and intuitive mapping interface, which caters to health sector staff from a range of technical backgrounds and capabilities. Tools and workflows implemented within the MSV provide clinicians multiple methods of obtaining Maternity Services related information, quickly and easily. Users follow simple guided interactions, which drive sophisticated spatial and attribute queries, as well as system integrations, in order to easily automate processes and enable access to requisite information required for discharges pertaining to proximity of services given the patients’ needs.
Since the MSV’s launch in March 2017 there has been a significant reduction in reported incidences of delayed or absent follow up on mothers and/or newborns post discharge due to an inappropriate discharge.
29 public maternity services now have access to the MSV and SOSU are working with IT at the King Edward Memorial Hospital and Kimberley Services (KEMH) to get the MSV on ALL clinical area desktop computers.
The MSV is currently limited to users within the Department of Health intranet, however discussions/plans are in progress with Western Australia Primary Health Alliance (WAPHA) to establish internet access via a reverse proxy to enable password protected access for NGOs and private health care providers to further maximize its use.
The future progression of the MSV is to develop an application for mobile phones and offline use, through Geocortex technology.
The SOSU initiative has also sparked interest across the greater Department of Health organisation for similar gains in effective and efficient service provision including WA Trauma Registry, as well as Cardiac, Stroke and Paediatric specialties. The vision is that specialty services will leverage from shared services information.
Watch the video below for an overview of the MSV.
If you would like more information on AAM’s role in developing the MSV, or inquire about how we can assist with your GIS project, please email us or contact your closest AAM office
