Exploring the combination of computational Grid processing techniques and public health information in relation to modeling the effects of hospital closure proposals

This paper explores the potential use of grid technology in health care, from the perspective of a European health authority in a regional health care network (RHCN) seeking to model the effects of a proposed hospital closure programme. The paper reviews the strategic implications of using a ´Grid-based´ application to enable the collation and analyses of public health information (PHI) to support health care planning and capital development. The paper also considers relevant issues in relation to the analysis of data extracted from electronic health records (EHR) systems and patient management systems (PMS), across many hospitals and primary health care centres (PHCC) in a region, via a Grid-based application. The potential for the use of the Grid to support PHI in compute and data intensive tasks is discussed, together with a proposed way forward for the development of a Grid-based RHCN PHI service.