HealthMapper is a mapping application developed by WHO. And I was quite lucky for having the opportuniy to learn HealthMapper directly from WHO SEARO trainer, couple weeks ago in the Ministry of Health, Jakarta. I underwent training for trainer sessions and then together with three other facilitators from UI, WHO and Binkesmas practised facilitating almost 50 participants from WHO, Ministry of Health and Province Health Office staffs from 12 provinces.
What is so special about this mapping application?
This application is a freeware (means : you may download this application freely, but may not modify the application). Unlike ArcView, though in some cases using ArcView gives more advantages, and in other cases HealthMapper does give the advantages.
Another advantage of HealthMapper is that it is "user-friendly". (Why I gave quotation marks on user-friendly phrase? You'll see in the next section of this post). This application is easy to use. The user can simply create a map, overlay indicators and import points, lines, or polygons.
HealthMapper also contains in-built data. Unfortunately the data used for the previous training were still from year 2000 data in WHO Head Quarter.
Something ain't cool about HealthMapper?
I think there are some...despite its advantages. It takes extra efforts to update data from a computer to another since HealthMapper is a stand-alone application. This is crucial since GIS for health and decision making lean heavily on data.
Based on my opinion, HealthMapper is developed for data representation, data analysis more than for the data preparation, data building etc. Because the steps it takes to build and prepare data (either in map or tabular form) are quite time consuming and not very user friendly.
The steps are okay for those who are familiar with computers (eg. the facilitators) but not for many of the participants (who fall into 3 subgroups : mapping application literate, computer literate and computer semi illiterate). And these subgroups are definitely represent the pattern of GIS application users (and future users) in Indonesia. So I consider... the user-friendliness of this application is relative.
Want a bite of HealthMapper?
Either download here or download the tutorials here.
