Aim

Mapping healthcare Centre in Phnom Penh, Cambodia is a primarily project conducted by a team of IT Center, Royal University of Phnom Penh, with a grant from Google.org. The project is going to map the location of the hospitals in Phnom Penh and deploy it with some information related to hospitals in Google Map/Earth. The principle objective of the project is to encourage young generation to pay attention to information communication technology engineering and improve healthcare service for both local people and foreigners by means of Information Technology.

Outcomes
The expected outcomes of this project are:

• improved health services through identifying localised regions that lack health care.
• a computational infrastructure for the development of a CAD emergency system.
• skills development in computer science students and the setup of an IT excellence centre to promote new IT technologies.

An emergency services system that despatches the relevant response vehicle to emergency calls requires a complex network of communications technology. This long-term goal in developing such a system in Cambodia is still a long way off, however the first step in this process is to collect the relevant data to begin building towards this goal. The research team at the IT centre of Royal University of Phnom Penh are undertaking research work into communication networks and are developing an infrastructure for Computer Aided Despatch (CAD) technology to be implemented in the future. This project comprises of research, development, and teaching in order to map out health care centres and the centre’s capabilities, throughout Phnom Penh, and nearby areas. This is expected to contribute to the long-term goal of a CAD system to improve public health and social services by through utilising police, fire and health care more effegctively, thus contributing directly to the well-being of Cambodian society.

The research and development aspect will be to locate and identify the hospitals, contact details, its capabilities in terms of its size, beds, and available doctors and despatch vehicles. The data will be initially static but future development of the program will allow an online updating system. The data will be deployed into Google Maps/Earth linked by the Global Positioning System (GPS) coordinates of each hospital. The teaching aspect will contribute to informing and empowering the relevant persons who need the system. In addition, the research students, who are the future software developers in Cambodia, will be educated through practical experience in the development of new software applications, and managing projects. In addition, the project will provide a boost for the setup of an IT centre of excellence for development of software technology at the IT department of RUPP and to provide greater opportunities and support for talented graduates to further their studies with IT department.

Therefore this project aims to:

• locate, identify, and identify health care centres throughout Phnom Penh.
• develop a database for storing the information for public use and set the foundations for a dynamic database where the data can be updated in future.
• create a map to visualise the health centres, which provides significant information such as identifying shortest routes to a health centre, or shortages of health centres in local regions.
• contribute towards the development of the long-term goal of Computer Aided Despatch emergency services system.
• educate future software developers of Cambodia in the development of new software applications, and managing projects through practical experience
• contribute to the setup of an IT centre of excellence for development of software technology at the IT department of RUPP
• provide greater opportunities and support for talented graduates of RUPP to continue their studies in software development.