April 15, 2024

3D Views of Healthcare Locations

Google Maps has just released a fascinating new capability. Their new 3D Area Explorer offers the ability to create immersive, interactive views of any point of interest. Like a 2D map, locations are pinned, and the view can be rotated on various axes to explore the locations. This would be useful in applications like "find a provider" apps that would be able now to show the user around an unfamiliar building or facility compound, making it easier to find their destination and building entrance.

Combined with data from CarePrecise, such as HealthGeo, which contains latitude and longitude for U.S. providers, these clinicians and facilities, or a cluster of them, such as medical offices around a hospital, can be viewed as an interactive 3D map.

Using the Google Maps Platform API along with other tools from Google and CarePrecise datasets, such as CarePrecise Platinum extended healthcare provider data, it's possible to visualize information, such as:
  • All of one doctor's practice locations and the hospitals they're affiliated with, and to zoom around and identify travel routes
  • The locations of all medical facilities, or specific types of facilities, in a city or neighborhood
  • All of the practice locations of physicians with particular specialties, or who perform particular procedures
  • Locations of physicians who have opted out of Medicare, versus those who accept Medicare
We expect these tools to find uses in identifying areas that are underserved or overserved, offering improved revenue opportunities for providers. Overlaid with POI (Point of Interest) data from other vendors, heat maps can be created to indicate volumes of patients per location.  From retail to investment to insurance, innumerable scenarios scenarios make use of geospatial data. With 3D visualization, these complex data can be better understood and communicated with team members, stakeholders, and consumers.