Geo-Spatial MappingPrescription and Deprivation Data

Welcome to this demonstration of the Map of Care disease and medication usage mapping site.

The mapping site hosts interactive maps of medication usage in the UK. These maps are used to explore disease and treatment patterns in the UK.

Explore our map of medication and deprivation in England: GP Mapping Demo

We recommend using the Chrome browser for a smooth viewing experience.

What am I looking at?Mapping Medications

We use published public prescriptions data to analyse patterns of disease and treatment in the UK.

We process data on illness and medication usage reported by General Practices. The maps presented are visualisations derived from doctors' prescription patterns and associated medical conditions.

The examples presented on the site here are age related medication pathways. Our complete data set is much larger than the examples presented here.

We are able to investigate a wide range of care pathways at the resolution of individual medications, geography, demographics and other socioeconomic factors.

Mapping Demo

How to read the mapsGuide to Visualisation

Our maps are very interactive because we want you to read the map your way - press things, and move sliders to see what they do, or read the short description below.

Data Set selects the target medication for analysis.

Colour indicates the intensity - whether something occurs more often or less often in a place. Generally red means that's a bad thing, and green means that's a good thing (in relative terms)

Size of a circle indicates how many people are registered as being treated by the General Practice - larger circles mean more people are treated there.

Customising the Visualisation Most maps will contain the following sliders:

Radius allows you to change the size of the circles. Choose smaller circles for a precise visualisation and a wider radius for a more general overview

Opacity controls how dark the circles are. Lighter opacity with large circles is good for general "heatmap" type views; high opacity small circles are good for exploring a 'specific area.'

Threshold is the level of drug usage that is shown on the map. You can select to threshold either above or below the level.

Quality some maps have the ability to screen the results by the Indicator of Multiple Deprivation (IMD), a UK Govt combined deprivation index in which higher values mean less deprivation. Again, you can select to threshold above or below a particular level.

ExampleData, Intelligence and Spatial Mapping:

The maps allow us to attempt to answer some interesting questions about the potential demand for care services, such as can we identify individuals already on care pathways as indicated by prescription data by GP’s?

In this example (right) we selected the following settings: Dementia Dataset, setting the sliders to a 50% usage threshold and 50% Better quality.

Even in this simple application, the results are quite striking. The underlying data is indicative of patterns of emerging demand for care services.

The analysis can be extended to quantify the size and demographics of the potential candidate pool and identify possible care pathways.

Data used are: Prescriptions issued which identify spending on drugs by GP surgeries: Medications, List size (demographics) and Multiple Deprivation Index factors.

Geographical CoverageWhy is Wales/Scotland/Ireland/etc not included?

Currently all data sets are limited to reporting practices within the English border. We'll extend the mapping to other areas later in the project.

What are our data sources?

The data sets used in this demonstration are public data and were provided by UK government agencies (HSCIC and the DLCG). Note that this dataset is not current and is presented for demonstration purposes only.

The data is processed to create the most accessible visualisation for mapping. The visualisation is relative - the absolute values are not as important as the patterns of the differences in value between areas.

Developments

This example is one of a range of UK focussed geo-spatial mapping applications that Rubra Partners are developing. These include analysis of demographic trends, socio economic indicators and wealth distribution, and how these factors relate to the supply & demand for care services.

The data was processed using Open Layers 3 and Open Street Map.

Special thanks to the OpenLayers team for the mapping framework and OpenStreetMap.org for the map tile services: © OpenStreetMap contributors.