Revealing the value of geospatial information with isochrone maps for improving the management of heart attacks in South Africa

Abstract

An isoline connects points that have the same value, while an isochrone connects points on a map with the same travel time to a point. They are useful, amongst others, for transportation planning (e.g., Biazzo et al., 2019;Wiśniewski, 2017), for showing the time it takes runoff in a drainage basin to reach a lake (e.g., Ovcharuk et al. 2020;Ashmore et al., 2020) or for assessing accessibility of public services (e.g., Basu & Alves, 2019;Snyman, 2017). During the current COVID-19 pandemic, isochrones were used to assess whether citizens would be able to walk or cycle to everything they need within a given timeframe (Altaweel, 2020;Chu, 2020).The Bill of Rights in the South African Constitution (1996) protects the right to life, therefore improving emergency management services and access to hospitals is a priority. In this essay we describe a map (see Figure 1), recently prepared for the South African Heart Association STEMI SA Early Intervention Initiative, that envisages to improve systems of care to afford timely and appropriate management of ST-elevation Myocardial Infarction (STEMI) heart attacks. The Community-Oriented Primary Care