Encouraging online crowd to help map all health facilities in the country

By Philippine Information Agency (PIA 8)
March 24, 2012

TACLOBAN CITY  –  PhilHealth is encouraging the online crowd to help map up all health facilities in the Philippines in order to maximize the benefits of the social networking platform.

Atty. Jerry F. Ibay, PhilHealth-8 Regional Vice-President said that recognizing the strong presence of Filipinos on the Internet, PhilHealth hopes to gather their support to pin all health facilities on an online map.

PhilHealth will then display data over the facilities to better inform the public about available services in those facilities as committed to the Corporation.

In support to the Administration’s Kalusugan Pangkalahatan, the Philippine Health Insurance Corporation (PhilHealth) recently launched the first of its ‘Crowdsourcing for Health’ initiatives using GoogleMaps.

Crowdsourcing is defined as the act of taking a job traditionally performed by a designated agent (usually an employee) and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people in the form of an open call.

Leveraging the free services of Google Map Maker, PhilHealth, under the leadership of Dr. Eduardo P. Banzon, president and CEO, invites the Filipino community to start pinning both public and private health facilities on the online map.

The health facilities would range from hospitals, birthing homes or lying-in centers, private medical clinics, government health centers, dialysis centers, pharmacies, laboratories, and blood banks. Other health facilities can also be added.

Meanwhile, Ms. Marimar Zabala, information officer of PhilHealth Tacloban said that if one cannot pin the health facility on Google, he or she may opt to use the open source-based OpenStreetMap.org.

Interested crowd-sourcers are encouraged to pin as many health facilities as they can using Google MapMaker at www.google.com/mapmaker or OpenStreetMap at www.openstreetmap.org. PhilHealth will display a summary of the health facilities at the map on its official website, www.philhealth.gov.ph under Online Services.