Location intelligence for healthcare is a vital tool for public and private providers looking to optimise future planning processes.
Enhancing your understanding of emerging population trends and infrastructural developments within your area of coverage is the only way to ensure effective resource deployment.
In this article, we explore four key areas in which future planning is crucial, and how location intelligence for healthcare can help.
Location intelligence for healthcare: 4 key areas
Here is just a handful of the ways in which location intelligence can aid your future planning processes:
1) Cost-effective budgetary allocation
Public sector healthcare budgets are significantly stretched – the NHS has been tasked with identifying £22bn in efficiency savings by 2021.
Understanding where resources are most likely to be needed and when, especially in the case of perishable resources (medications, blood etc.), helps avoid costly wastage.
This process is aided when you can segment and visualise lifestyle, socio-economic and environmental factor-related data conveniently.
Location intelligence enables you to combine your own patient datasets with census, council tax band and other useful datasets, then automatically plot your findings on your own secure version of Google Maps.
2) Fast emergency response
Ambulances are set targets to arrive within eight minutes of a call, and speed is vital for saving lives.
Using location intelligence for healthcare to calculate drive-times and visualise new options for a full-coverage dispatch network without unnecessary overlaps will help you meet this important target.
3) Accessible services for vulnerable patients
Finding out how population needs are likely to change over time can help you predict additional support service requirements and deliver on them.
You can achieve this at a macro-scale with location intelligence, or highlight specific patients within a given area for future consideration.
This level of insight allows you to ensure services for the elderly, disabled and vulnerable can be accessed conveniently.
4) Advantageous commercial placement
Location intelligence for healthcare is also a useful tool for private healthcare providers and healthcare retailers.
Integrating this software into location planning processes enables private hospital, care home, clinic and pharmacy networks to:
- Expand into new areas with high demand
- Designate new territories with equal coverage
- Optimise existing or incorporate new logistical networks
High-street pharmacy chains can use Periscope® – an advanced location intelligence system – to select new locations based on footfall analysis, and quickly assess the impact of new housing or infrastructural developments.
In a sector as broadly relied upon as healthcare, local accessibility and cost-effective budgetary decision-making matter. Location intelligence will help you acquire the in-depth local, demographic and temporal understanding you need to deploy your resources intelligently.
Optimise your healthcare future planning processes with Periscope® from Newgrove; sign up for a free, 10-minute demo today.