A GIS Application for the Hospitalization of COVID-19 Patients

During the COVID-19 pandemic period, it is often necessary to hospitalize a patient positive for the virus and in serious health conditions in suitable hospitals. The difficulty in managing these emergencies arises from the fact that it is often not possible to know which is the nearest hospital with beds available for hospitalization of the COVID-19 patients. In this work, we present a GIS application based on a relational database that allows to determine an optimal path for the patient transport from a starting point to the nearest hospital with free places for hospitalization. The developed application reduces the patient's transport time, decreasing the exposure time of the medical staff in the ambulance in contact with the positive patient. The application was developed in the urban area of Catania where hospitals gather a large pool of users and therefore it is essential to have a system that in real-time provides the available beds and thus optimize the distribution of COVID-19 positive patients who need an admission to a hospital.