Technology can make healthcare more accessible, as demonstrated by one case study that examines location and access to emergency obstetric treatment. An illustration of a medical facility and a community health worker. For individuals everywhere, access to healthcare continues to be a major obstacle.
To acquire the care they require, many may make long commutes, miss work, or scurry to locate childcare. Delays in diagnosis, treatment, and even life-threatening emergencies might result from these obstacles. Governments and public health authorities continue to struggle with the lack of current, reliable data to guide decisions for their communities. We discovered a way to assist in an unexpected location: Google Maps travel insights.
Comprehending geography and healthcare accessibility
One area where these access issues are most urgent is emergency obstetric care. Research indicates that women' and babies' outcomes throughout pregnancy and labor are greatly impacted by the length of time it takes to get from home to medical facilities.
In fact, prompt access to emergency obstetric care (EmOC) can reduce intrapartum stillbirths by up to 75% and maternal fatalities by up to 50%. Historically, geographic distance was used to estimate access to these services. However, anyone residing in a densely populated city is aware that proximity to a facility does not necessarily translate into speed.
A short trip can become a lengthy one due to traffic. This changed the way we thought about the issue: Women in metropolitan areas also have trouble getting to the doctor in a timely manner when there is an emergency. In order to give decision makers in Nigeria—Africa's most populous country, where over 50% of the population lives in densely populated metropolitan areas and where maternal deaths account for over one-third of global maternal deaths—travel time information, we teamed with the On TIME Consortium last year.
We collaborated to develop a program that pinpoints hotspot locations where women take the longest to seek care by using insights from Google Maps. The dashboard shows us how long it could take a pregnant woman to go to a facility where she can receive emergency obstetric care by estimating the travel times to the closest, second-nearest, and third-nearest emergency obstetric care facilities for various locations.
We sought to provide data-driven insights to researchers, public health officials, and anyone who require them in order to identify locations with restricted access to EmOC. This would allow them to plan improvements to ambulance routes and road infrastructure, as well as to construct new facilities or upgrade existing ones.
For instance, it has aided groups such as Emergency Response Africa in allocating resources in an educated manner. Additionally, we think it may help others comprehend how geography and socioeconomic fairness are related.
Increasing access to medical treatment
Additionally, we are contributing to the discussion of disparities in access to EmOC care. Beyond EmOC care, we are collaborating with other public health partners to provide a more realistic picture of access issues, such as access to parks and other outdoor areas, immunization locations, and general healthcare accessibility.
For years, we have investigated how AI may help with access issues. For example, we have developed AI models to identify TB in chest X-rays and to evaluate the size and location of the fetus during pregnancy. Instead of requiring patients to go to a doctor's office for these vital checks, we've made these models portable so that healthcare professionals may utilize them in their communities.
Our solutions, such as Open Health Stack, assist developers worldwide in implementing healthcare data standards for applications. We'll keep searching for fresh ways that our technology can help more people get healthcare. We'll keep assisting people worldwide in leading healthier lifestyles, whether that means introducing new tools, facilitating additional research, or discovering innovative applications for our products.
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