Disease Mapping and Health Analysis Using Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial (FOSS4G): An Exploratory Qualitative Study of Tuberculosis

Geographical information and communications technology (GeoICT) have the potential to greatly improve the quality of healthcare and disease control management system. Local health departments in some developing countries may need to expense high costs to process the disease datasets using commercial or proprietary geospatial technologies. This study aimed at exploratory studying on the GIS function capabilities of Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial (FOSS4G) disease mapping and analysing of tuberculosis (TB) in Petaling, specifically QGIS, SAGA GIS and desktop software (ArcGIS). ArcGIS was utilised as a comparative benchmark to the selected FOSS due to its advanced GIS functions of proprietary and well-established software. The disease mapping and statistical analysis were conducted using spatial patterns and hotspot map statistics toolbox in the software to explore the local TB pattern. From comparative studies of the software capabilities, it reveals that these GIS software have basic functions of disease mapping and analysis, but a better performance was expected in ArcGIS software due to enhanced statistical advancements. In the analytical aspect of FOSS, QGIS can perform slightly better than SAGA GIS since QGIS can process both vector and raster analysis of the disease datasets. Inclusively, SAGA GIS and QGIS have basic GIS capabilities and special features such as practical, minimal cost and easy to use by the local health departments.

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