Objectives: In 2013, the Department of Health, Executive Yuan published the 'public places necessary emergency equipment management approach' which all public places are required to provide emergency equipment for citizens to use for sudden cardiac arrest. However, current automated external defibrillator defibrillators (AED) configurations have to be discussed. This research use the spatial analysis of Geographic Information System (GIS) to find the most appropriate configuration of the AED places in Taipei City. Methods: This research use spatial autocorrelation to determine whether Out-of Hospital Cardiac Arrest (OHCA) is uniformly distributed, and detect OHCA hotspot by using point density analysis. Lastly, we conduct multiple ring buffer to identify locations of OHCA hot spots and decide the locations to set AEDs. Results: Based on the above method, Moran's Index is used in this research to measure the spatial association of OHCA. The result (Z-score = 10.161, P < 0.001) have shown that the distribution of OHCA exhibits a spatial autocorrelation. The research use Point Density to identify OHCA hot spots. The result indicate that Wanhua district, Datong district and Zhongshan district are the most densely distributed OHCA area. In our example, through the method of multiple ring buffer, we found Wanhua district need to place AED around 100- 200m on the OHCA hot spots. (hospitals, clinics, pharmacis or convenient stores). Conclusions: This method can provide valuable information for government to assess the resources allocation and find the best setting of AED.
Date:
2014-06
Relation:
Journal of Taiwan Association for Medical Informatics. 2014 Jun;23(2):45-56.
