ASPO Abstracts
An Efficient Solution for Gathering and Visualizing Catchment Area Geospatial Data
Category: Cancer Health Disparities
Conference Year: 2023
Abstract Body:
Purpose: To provide an efficient way of gathering and visualizing publicly available data at various geographic levels for any cancer center catchment area. Methods: We constructed programs in Python to access data from various publicly available sources through application programming interfaces, automated data downloads and web scraping. This data was then manipulated into datasets at different geographic levels, and exported as an organized collection of files. Two pathways for turning this data into interactive mapping applications were then constructed: one using ArcGIS Online and one using R Shiny. All code was structured to allow for automation of updates, and generalized for easy adaptation to any cancer center catchment area structured as a set of US counties. Results: This process resulted in a comprehensive software solution licensed under the name of Cancer InFocus. Cancer InFocus creates a quick, efficient and automatable mechanism for gathering much of the data necessary to characterize the cancer burden in any US geographic area of interest and translating it into simple applications for either internal or external distribution. Cancer InFocus is available through a no-cost licensing agreement with the University of Kentucky. The functionality of Cancer InFocus is maintained and expanded upon by the online community of users who have chosen to adopt this platform. Conclusions: Gathering and visualizing publicly available data on the cancer burden for a given cancer center catchment area at the county and census tract levels can be performed using modern computer programming techniques. This makes doing an initial assessment of the cancer burden more efficient, allowing greater time to be spent on developing strategic priorities and operationalizing insights. The use of open source tools to perform this task allows for its free dissemination to other institutions looking for a ready-made solution to characterize their catchment area. This also demonstrates the ability to develop efficient solutions for gathering and visualizing geospatial data relevant to other disease fields.
Keywords: Catchment area; Informatics