Introduction. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) have
become an innovative and somewhat crucial tool for analyzing
relationships between public health data and environment. This
study, though focusing on a Local Health Unit of northeastern
Italy, could be taken as a benchmark for developing a standardized
national data-acquiring format, providing a step-by-step
instructions on the manipulation of address elements specific for
Italian language and traditions.
Methods. Geocoding analysis was carried out on a health database
comprising 268,517 records of the Local Health Unit of
Rovigo in the Veneto region, covering a period of 10 years, starting
from 2001 up to 2010. The Map Service provided by the Environmental
Research System Institute (ESRI, Redlands, CA), and
ArcMap 10.0 by ESRI\uae were, respectively, the reference data and
the GIS software, employed in the geocoding process.
Results. The first attempt of geocoding produced a poor quality
result, having about 40% of the addresses matched. A procedure
of manual standardization was performed in order to enhance the
quality of the results, consequently a set of guiding principle were
expounded which should be pursued for geocoding health data.
High-level geocoding detail will provide a more precise geographic
representation of health related events.
Conclusions. The main achievement of this study was to outline
some of the difficulties encountered during the geocoding of
health data and to put forward a set of guidelines, which could
be useful to facilitate the process and enhance the quality of the
results. Public health informatics represents an emerging specialty
that highlights on the application of information science
and technology to public health practice and research. Therefore,
this study could draw the attention of the National Health Service
to the underestimated problem of geocoding accuracy in health
related data for environmental risk assessment