Maps/Output Generated From South Carolina Community Assessment Network Online Application (SCAN)

State-level public health agencies regularly deal with issues that require massive amounts of data to be processed, integrated, analyzed, and distributed to a variety of different end users. These end users are a diverse internal and external group including concerned citizens, community organizations, health care workers and administrators, university researchers, and other state agencies. Within each group, there exists a range of technical capabilities and a diverse set of needs. With limited resources, these agencies need to determine the most appropriate way to use information for access in a spatial and statistical manner that accommodates varied needs while facilitating the daily decision making process in public health assessment and surveillance. Time and budget constraints, agency cooperation and collaboration, enterprise architecture, legacy processes, privacy concerns, and existing infrastructure are some of the issues considered during this process. The South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control (SC DHEC) uses GIS technology to facilitate much of this data processing.

The Division of Biostatistics and Health GIS Division within Public Health Statistics and Information Services serves as a model for GIS use. The division uses ArcIMS, ArcSDE, ArcGIS, and various Esri software extensions coupled with varied programming languages and relational database management systems to enable its enterprise GIS. Procedures have been developed to keep GIS layers accessible, current, and well documented in a manner that had previously been handled based on paper maps or hand drawing. Before, it had been almost impossible to study health problems below county boundaries without expending a tremendous amount of time and manual labor.