The difference between life and death for severely injured people depends upon the amount of time it takes to get them to a trauma center hospital. The siting of trauma center hospitals, however, is more complex than just maps of land area coverage showing ringed bands around each hospital. Surrounding helicopter and ambulance locations and speeds, the number and location of trauma centers in a region, and the spatial relationships between these facilities also need to be considered. To be viable, the hospital must serve a large enough population of severely injured people to maintain the skills of its healthcare providers and offer high quality care.
A team of researchers from the University of Pennsylvania and Johns Hopkins University set out to develop a mathematical model to assist with trauma center siting while taking these important considerations into account, and to make that model accessible through the Internet. They have developed the Trauma Resource Allocation Model for Ambulances and Hospitals (TRAMAH), a mathematical optimization model that uses population and access to existing trauma centers based on geographic relationships to ambulances and helicopters to simulate the effects of newly sited trauma centers.
Azavea partnered with the researchers and the Cartographic Modeling Lab to develop an interactive website enabling visitors to specify timeframe (access within 45 or 60 minutes) and transportation mode (ambulance, helicopter, or both), and identify the locations of current hospitals and trauma centers and their accessibility. The application provides a map and coverage information based on percentages of population and land covered by the existing system.
This website, which leverages ESRI’s ArcIMS and ArcSDE technologies, is now accessible to the public at http://tramah.cml.upenn.edu.
Many other factors may need to be taken into consideration in siting trauma centers, and the TRAMAH system will be best used alongside, rather than instead of, the specialized knowledge of trauma systems planners. It does, however, demonstrate the very real value that GIS can add when dealing with limited resources that must be allocated over extensive geographic areas.
