A SYSTEM TO DEFINE AND ALLOCATE HEALTH-CARE RESOURCES ON A TERRITORY TO IMPROVE THE LIFE QUALITY OF THE POPULATIONS IN DEVELOPING-COUNTRIES

In this paper the health resource allocation problem is discussed. An object-oriented system is proposed and its implemented prototype is il lustrated. It consists of two parts: a Geographical Information System , which is able to acquire and store both geographical and social-epid emiological information (including the resource distribution on that t erritory), and a Decision Support System, able to decide, using optimi zation algorithms, the new resource allocation in order to obtain a qu asi-optimal solution for the cost/benefit ratio minimization problem, after having fixed the goal (e.g., the decrease of the incidence of a given disease) and constraints (e.g., a tired budget, a given set of a vailable resources, etc.). The object-oriented database which is part of the system can simulate and store different scenarios. depending on the different goals and constraints defined in input, by means of a u ser friendly interface. (C) 1997 Academic Press.