Geospatial resources for supporting data standards, guidance and best practice in health informatics

Mathys and Kamel Boulos BMC Research Notes 2011, 4:19 http://www.biomedcentral.com/1756-0500/4/19 DATA NOTE Open Access Geospatial resources for supporting data standards, guidance and best practice in health informatics Tony Mathys1, Maged N Kamel Boulos2* Abstract Background: The 1980s marked the occasion when Geographical Information System (GIS) technology was broadly introduced into the geo-spatial community through the establishment of a strong GIS industry. This technology quickly disseminated across many countries, and has now become established as an important research, planning and commercial tool for a wider community that includes organisations in the public and private health sectors. The broad acceptance of GIS technology and the nature of its functionality have meant that numerous datasets have been created over the past three decades. Most of these datasets have been created independently, and without any structured documentation systems in place. However, search and retrieval systems can only work if there is a mechanism for datasets existence to be discovered and this is where proper metadata creation and management can greatly help. This situation must be addressed through support mechanisms such as Web-based portal technologies, metadata editor tools, automation, metadata standards and guidelines and collaborative efforts with relevant individuals and organisations. Engagement with data developers or administrators should also include a strategy of identifying the benefits associated with metadata creation and publication. Findings: The establishment of numerous Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDIs), and other Internet resources, is a testament to the recognition of the importance of supporting good data management and sharing practices across the geographic information community. These resources extend to health informatics in support of research, public services and teaching and learning. This paper identifies many of these resources available to the UK academic health informatics community. It also reveals the reluctance of many spatial data creators across the wider UK academic community to use these resources to create and publish metadata, or deposit their data in repositories for sharing. The Go-Geo! service is introduced as an SDI developed to provide UK academia with the necessary resources to address the concerns surrounding metadata creation and data sharing. The Go-Geo! portal, Geodoc metadata editor tool, ShareGeo spatial data repository, and a range of other support resources, are described in detail. Conclusions: This paper describes a variety of resources available for the health research and public health sector to use for managing and sharing their data. The Go-Geo! service is one resource which offers an SDI for the eclectic range of disciplines using GIS in UK academia, including health informatics. The benefits of data management and sharing are immense, and in these times of cost restraints, these resources can be seen as solutions to find cost savings which can be reinvested in more research. * Correspondence: 2 Faculty of Health, The University of Plymouth, Drake Circus, Plymouth, Devon, PL4 8AA, UK Full list of author information is available at the end of the article © 2011 Kamel Boulos et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Mathys and Kamel Boulos BMC Research Notes 2011, 4:19 http://www.biomedcentral.com/1756-0500/4/19 Background The 1980s marked the occasion when GIS technology was initially introduced into the geospatial community. (The 1980s mark the establishment of a strong GIS industry and new vendor products, with major influence on the discipline of Geography, though earlier nonmainstream systems also existed, e.g., Canada Geographic Information System in the mid-1960s [1].) This technology quickly disseminated across many countries, and has now become established as an important research, planning and commercial tool for a wider community that includes organisations in the public and private health sectors. The broad acceptance of GIS technology, and the nature of its functionality, has meant that numerous datasets have been created over the past three decades. Most of these datasets have been created independently, and without any structured documentation systems in place. A 2006 spatial data audit conducted at four UK academic institutions is a testament to this. The audit yielded more than 500 spatial dataset titles, and also found hundreds more files in personal computer directories and in stored media [2,3]. These files had no provenance or descriptive documentation, but their extensions revealed that they had been created with various GIS and remote sensing software packages. Eschewing metadata creation and publication is pervasive across the (Geographic Information) GI-community; the reasons being that it is perceived to be tedious and time-consuming [4,5]. A survey of archaeological organisations in the Republic of Ireland revealed that 57.1 percent of these organisations did not include metadata creation as part of their organisations’ data management strategy [6]. The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Working Group on Data Quality conducted a survey in 2008 which revealed that about 55.8 percent of respondents said they were not using any recognised standards for data quality work being conducted in their organisation [7]. Academia appears to represent a greater challenge based on the lack of commitment to metadata creation despite support and engagement with that community in the UK [8]. Undocumented spatial datasets face a number of risks. Undocumented dataset files are likely to become redundant. If familiarity with a dataset is lost then time and costs must be assumed for any reassessments. The absence of a formal documentation system also means that datasets cannot easily be revealed to the wider geospatial community, therefore limiting other potential users’ ability to locate both the datasets and developers. The absence of information about existing datasets can lead other organisations to expend considerable time and costs in producing data that are already in existence, but stored at an undisclosed location. Page 2 of 18 This widespread lack of proper data documentation can be improved through support mechanisms such as geospatial metadata standards and guidelines, training, metadata editor tools and metadata automation to extract information from spatial datasets. Web-based resources such as geoportal technologies must also be developed to publish metadata. A geoportal is a type of Web portal used to find and access geographic (geospatial) information and associated geographic services (display, editing, analysis, etc.) (...truncated)