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Towards Web-based representation and processing of health information

BACKGROUND: There is great concern within health surveillance, on how to grapple with environmental degradation, rapid urbanization, population mobility and growth. The Internet has emerged as an efficient way to share health information, enabling users to access and understand data at their fingert...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Gao, Sheng, Mioc, Darka, Yi, Xiaolun, Anton, Francois, Oldfield, Eddie, Coleman, David J
Formato: Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2009
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2651125/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19159445
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1476-072X-8-3
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author Gao, Sheng
Mioc, Darka
Yi, Xiaolun
Anton, Francois
Oldfield, Eddie
Coleman, David J
author_facet Gao, Sheng
Mioc, Darka
Yi, Xiaolun
Anton, Francois
Oldfield, Eddie
Coleman, David J
author_sort Gao, Sheng
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: There is great concern within health surveillance, on how to grapple with environmental degradation, rapid urbanization, population mobility and growth. The Internet has emerged as an efficient way to share health information, enabling users to access and understand data at their fingertips. Increasingly complex problems in the health field require increasingly sophisticated computer software, distributed computing power, and standardized data sharing. To address this need, Web-based mapping is now emerging as an important tool to enable health practitioners, policy makers, and the public to understand spatial health risks, population health trends and vulnerabilities. Today several web-based health applications generate dynamic maps; however, for people to fully interpret the maps they need data source description and the method used in the data analysis or statistical modeling. For the representation of health information through Web-mapping applications, there still lacks a standard format to accommodate all fixed (such as location) and variable (such as age, gender, health outcome, etc) indicators in the representation of health information. Furthermore, net-centric computing has not been adequately applied to support flexible health data processing and mapping online. RESULTS: The authors of this study designed a HEalth Representation XML (HERXML) schema that consists of the semantic (e.g., health activity description, the data sources description, the statistical methodology used for analysis), geometric, and cartographical representations of health data. A case study has been carried on the development of web application and services within the Canadian Geospatial Data Infrastructure (CGDI) framework for community health programs of the New Brunswick Lung Association. This study facilitated the online processing, mapping and sharing of health information, with the use of HERXML and Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) services. It brought a new solution in better health data representation and initial exploration of the Web-based processing of health information. CONCLUSION: The designed HERXML has been proven to be an appropriate solution in supporting the Web representation of health information. It can be used by health practitioners, policy makers, and the public in disease etiology, health planning, health resource management, health promotion and health education. The utilization of Web-based processing services in this study provides a flexible way for users to select and use certain processing functions for health data processing and mapping via the Web. This research provides easy access to geospatial and health data in understanding the trends of diseases, and promotes the growth and enrichment of the CGDI in the public health sector.
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spelling pubmed-26511252009-03-05 Towards Web-based representation and processing of health information Gao, Sheng Mioc, Darka Yi, Xiaolun Anton, Francois Oldfield, Eddie Coleman, David J Int J Health Geogr Research BACKGROUND: There is great concern within health surveillance, on how to grapple with environmental degradation, rapid urbanization, population mobility and growth. The Internet has emerged as an efficient way to share health information, enabling users to access and understand data at their fingertips. Increasingly complex problems in the health field require increasingly sophisticated computer software, distributed computing power, and standardized data sharing. To address this need, Web-based mapping is now emerging as an important tool to enable health practitioners, policy makers, and the public to understand spatial health risks, population health trends and vulnerabilities. Today several web-based health applications generate dynamic maps; however, for people to fully interpret the maps they need data source description and the method used in the data analysis or statistical modeling. For the representation of health information through Web-mapping applications, there still lacks a standard format to accommodate all fixed (such as location) and variable (such as age, gender, health outcome, etc) indicators in the representation of health information. Furthermore, net-centric computing has not been adequately applied to support flexible health data processing and mapping online. RESULTS: The authors of this study designed a HEalth Representation XML (HERXML) schema that consists of the semantic (e.g., health activity description, the data sources description, the statistical methodology used for analysis), geometric, and cartographical representations of health data. A case study has been carried on the development of web application and services within the Canadian Geospatial Data Infrastructure (CGDI) framework for community health programs of the New Brunswick Lung Association. This study facilitated the online processing, mapping and sharing of health information, with the use of HERXML and Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) services. It brought a new solution in better health data representation and initial exploration of the Web-based processing of health information. CONCLUSION: The designed HERXML has been proven to be an appropriate solution in supporting the Web representation of health information. It can be used by health practitioners, policy makers, and the public in disease etiology, health planning, health resource management, health promotion and health education. The utilization of Web-based processing services in this study provides a flexible way for users to select and use certain processing functions for health data processing and mapping via the Web. This research provides easy access to geospatial and health data in understanding the trends of diseases, and promotes the growth and enrichment of the CGDI in the public health sector. BioMed Central 2009-01-21 /pmc/articles/PMC2651125/ /pubmed/19159445 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1476-072X-8-3 Text en Copyright © 2009 Gao et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License ( (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0) ), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Research
Gao, Sheng
Mioc, Darka
Yi, Xiaolun
Anton, Francois
Oldfield, Eddie
Coleman, David J
Towards Web-based representation and processing of health information
title Towards Web-based representation and processing of health information
title_full Towards Web-based representation and processing of health information
title_fullStr Towards Web-based representation and processing of health information
title_full_unstemmed Towards Web-based representation and processing of health information
title_short Towards Web-based representation and processing of health information
title_sort towards web-based representation and processing of health information
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2651125/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19159445
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1476-072X-8-3
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