Development of Web-Based Epidemiological Reporting System for Tasmania Utilizing a Google Maps Add-On

The Population Health Epidemiology Unit of the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) in Tasmania uses hospitalizations, deaths, cancer incidence and notifiable diseases data to conduct monitoring and surveillance of the health of the Tasmanian population. The data is coded according to local government area (LGA). Traditionally commercial mapping software tools are used to map these types of epidemiological data. However these tools are very expensive, demand high computer resources and have very limited accessibility. There is an urgent need to find a cheap and accessible alternative for health services. Recently Google Maps and Microsoft Virtual Earth have become popular tools for mapping geographically-referenced health data on the Internet. In this paper, it is proposed to develop a Google Maps mapping application to augment the DHHS Tasmania web-based epidemiology system (`Web Epi'). First, the geographical data model (including vector data type and geographic file conversion) is presented. Then the epidemiological data are classified. Finally, geographical visualization of epidemiological data on Google Maps is generated. The web mapping services provided by Google maps are demonstrated to be an alternative solution to present epidemiological information geographically. The mapping module of `Web Epi' may eventually replace expensive commercial tools for mapping geographical health data on the web.