Accessibility Evaluation of High Order Urban Hospitals for the Elderly: A Case Study of First-Level Hospitals in Xi’an, China

Navigating Aged Care Services with GIS: Trends, Developments, and Future Directions

BACKGROUND

With the growing challenge of an aging population, emerging technologies are increasingly being integrated into the production, organization, and delivery of aged care services. Geographic Information System (GIS), a computer-based tool for spatial information analysis and processing, has made significant strides in the allocation of care recources and service delivery for older adults, a notably vulnerable group. Despite its growing importance, cross-disciplinary literature reviews on this theme are scare. This scoping review was conducted to encapsulate the advancements and discern the future trajectory of GIS applications in aged care services.

METHODS

A comprehensive search across nine databases yielded 5941 articles. Adhering to specific inclusion and exclusion criteria, 61 articles were selected for a detailed analysis.

RESULTS

The 61 articles span from 2003 to 2022, with a notable increase in publications since 2018, comprising 41 articles (67% of the total) published between 2018-2022. Developed countries contributed 66% of the papers, with 45% focusing on accessibility issues. In the domain of aged care services, GIS has been predominantly utilized for model construction, mapping, and site selection, with a growing emphasis on addressing the unique needs of different subgroups of older adults.

CONCLUSION

The past two decades have seen substantial growth in the application of GIS in aged care services, reflecting its increasing importance in this field. This scoping review not only charts the historical development of GIS applications in aged care services but also underscores the need for innovative research approaches. Future directions should emphasize the integration of GIS with diverse methodologies to address the heterogeneous needs of older adults and improve the overall delivery of aged care services. Such advancements in GIS applications have the potential to significantly enhance the efficiency, accessibility, and quality of care for the aging population.

Assessing Spatial Accessibility of Community Hospitals for the Elderly in Beijing, China

Accessibility of health services signifies the quality and equitability of universal health provision. The hierarchical medical system recently implemented in China offers the policy instruments to improve medical services to the elderly in an aging society. As the critical primary care gateway, accessibility to community hospitals has significant impacts on people's health. However, current research has paid little attention to spatial accessibility within walking distance of community hospitals, especially for the elderly. This study selected four districts with different urbanization levels in the rapidly developing Beijing metropolis. The spatial interaction model was applied to measure the accessibility of community hospitals for the elderly at the community level. An attractiveness index was computed based on key hospital traits. The results showed that: (1) community hospitals could cover 82.66% of elderly residents, and 77.63% of the communities were within walking distance. The served elderly proportion was relatively high in central urban areas and low in the suburbs. (2) The attractiveness indices of hospitals varied notably between districts, with higher values in more urbanized areas. (3) The spatial accessibility for the elderly of hospitals differed significantly between the four districts, with a descending gradient from central to suburban and rural areas, as indicated by the Gini coefficients and Lorenz curves. (4) The accessibility index was strongly related to the served elderly population and the hospital-residence distance. The findings provide policy directions to the government, including providing more primary-care resources to suburban and rural areas, building new community hospitals in identified provision gaps, upgrading some clinics to hospitals in rural areas, and planning hospitals according to the projected trend of the elderly population in terms of quantity and distribution. The considerable provision disparity between core urban, suburban and rural areas can be addressed by refined spatial health planning informed by research.

Symmetry in Engineering Sciences

The symmetry concept is mainly used in two senses. The first from the aesthetic point of view of proportionality or harmony, since human beings seek symmetry in nature. Or the second, from an engineering point of view to attend to geometric regularities or to explain a repetition process or pattern in a given phenomenon. This special issue dedicated to geometry in engineering deals with this last concept, which aims to collect both the aspects of geometric solutions in engineering, which may even have a certain aesthetic character, and the aspect of the use of patterns that explain observed phenomena.