Types of emergency patient analyzed using the geographic information system

¹Department of Emergency Medicine, Kangwon National University Hospital, Chuncheon, Korea
²Department of Emergency Medicine, School of Medicine, Kangwon National University, Chuncheon, Korea
³Department of Radiology, Kangwon National University Hospital, Chuncheon, Korea
⁴Department of Radiology, School of Medicine, Kangwon National University, Chuncheon, Korea
⁵Department of Geography Education, College of Education, Kangwon National University, Chuncheon, Korea

Correspondence

Taek Geun Ohk ,Tel: 033-258-2438, Fax: 033-258-2451, Email: otgotg11@gmail.com,

Received: September 16, 2020; Revised: November 5, 2020 Accepted: November 10, 2020. Published online: October 31, 2021.

ABSTRACT

Objective:
Predicting the incidence of emergency patients can be very important for the efficient use of emergency medical resources and the deployment of 119 centers in a pre-hospital setting. The study was conducted to analyze the occurrence of emergency patients using geographic information systems in a pre-hospital setting in Korea.
Method:
The basic data used in this study were collected from the 119 centers in Chuncheon-si, Korea, under the firefighting headquarters in Gangwon-do from January 2012 to December 2016.
Results:
The total number of patients transferred by 119 paramedics was 72,362. Of these, 9,904 (14.7%) were emergency patients; 519 (0.7%) had cardiovascular diseases; 383 (0.5%) had cerebrovascular diseases; 3,043 (4.2%) were trauma patients; 58,413 (80.7%) were non-emergency patients. The occurrence of emergency diseases was slightly lower in the Hyoja-dong area, and it was slightly higher in the area of the outskirts of the city. The incidence of heart disease was low in the Hyoja-dong and Nam-myeon areas, but the incidence of heart disease was highly observed in other areas. The number of trauma patients was 1,265 (41.6%) in the outskirts of the city, a suburban area, showing a relatively higher incidence than other emerging diseases.
Conclusion:
The deployment of ambulances in Chuncheon-si should be carried out considering demographic characteristics and patient occurrence.

Key words: Spatio-temporal analysis; Emergency medical service; Geographic information systems