BENGALURU: In case of road accidents, the public can now know about the nearest medical facility with an app called Nearby Services, now available on Google Playstore.
The Health Department has mapped its district hospitals, primary health centres, community health centres, trauma centres, ambulances, vaccination centres and blood banks in the app. Location of nearest police stations can also be seen in it.
There are a few categories for sending messages based on the type of emergency like road accident, heart attack, fire accident, explosion, injury and others. Once the user selects the category and gives a confirmation, a message will be sent to the authorities concerned.
The state government initiated the development of Karnataka-Geographic Information System (K-GIS) programme as a flagship project. All departments are mandated to share geo-spatial data available with them through this programme for planning and developmental needs. The data is shared across the departments and with the public. The Karnataka State Remote Sensing Applications Centre (KSRSAC), under the Department of IT, BT is entrusted with the implementation of the programme.
As part of the KGIS programme, the Health Department coordinated with KSRSAC and completed mapping of various hospitals.
The Nearby Services app can be used to identify the nearest government hospital’s location, its distance and route for navigation from the user’s current location. For example, the 10 nearest blood banks are displayed, along with their address and phone number.
When the user clicks on any particular blood bank, its phone number and calling option is enabled. Once the user clicks on the name of a feature, the shortest possible route from the user’s current location will be displayed.