GIS-Based Accessibility Analysis of Health-Care Facilities: A Case Study in Hong Kong

Abstract

The accessibility of health-care facility is significant to judge the convenience of health-care system. Usually, spatial distribution of population retrieved from census data is acted as demand in accessibility evaluation, which ignores the gender and the age of population. As is known, the cancer rate is highly dependent on the gender and the age of population. A trial on accessibility quantifying and mapping for cancer risk with regard to population structure is carried out in this article with the assistance of geographic information system. By ratio method and the shortest road distance, accessibility in health-care facility can be quantified and mapped. With high population density and scarce public health resource, Hong Kong is selected as a case study area. Due to the mountainous terrain and islands and the heterogeneous spatial population distribution, the accessibility in health-care facility for Hong Kong is essential for urban planning. The results indicate that the spatial layout of health-care facility in Hong Kong is in general reasonable. Cancer patients who reside in isolated places or islands have low accessibility, and they just occupy a small part of entire population in Hong Kong.