Our Work

Blue Raster helps you tell your story through interactive
mapping technology. Make your message clear, exciting,
and user-friendly for both mobile and web platforms.

HealthLandscape

Driving Primary Care Insights with Blue Raster and HealthLandscape: The Milbank Primary Care Scorecard Data Dashboard

Posted on by Phil Satlof

At Blue Raster, our passion lies in bringing data to life through innovative geospatial technology. One of our most impactful collaborations is with HealthLandscape, a leader in health data analytics and visualization. Together, we’ve worked on numerous projects that empower decision-makers and community stakeholders with actionable insights, including the Milbank Primary Care Scorecard.

Milbank Memorial Fund

About the Milbank Primary Care Scorecard

Developed by the Milbank Memorial Fund in partnership with HealthLandscape and other key stakeholders, the Milbank Primary Care Scorecard Data Dashboard offers a clear, data-driven view of primary care in the United States. With a focus on state-level metrics, it sheds light on crucial areas such as:

 

  • Access to Primary Care
  • Supply of Primary Care Providers
  • Training
  • Use of Telehealth
  • Health Outcomes and Equity

By aggregating multiple data sources into an accessible, interactive dashboard, the Scorecard helps policymakers, providers, and advocates better understand where primary care is thriving and where investments are still needed.

Our Role: Transforming Data into Insight

Blue Raster partnered with HealthLandscape to design and optimize the Dashboard’s interactive mapping and visualization components:

Data Integration

    • Incorporating a variety of data sources—ranging from national surveys to state-level health databases—to deliver a comprehensive view of primary care indicators.
    • Ensuring data is consistently formatted, maintained, and updated to provide accurate, real-time insights.
  2. User-Centric Design
    • Creating an intuitive interface that allows users to explore, filter, and compare states’ performance on key metrics.
    • Employing clear visual cues and interactive features so users can quickly identify trends, disparities, and successes across regions.
  3. Advanced Geospatial Analytics
    • Developing mapping functions that highlight geographic patterns in care availability and outcomes.
    • Integrating features that enable users to toggle different health measures, view top performers, and isolate areas with the greatest need for improvement.

Impact on Primary Care Policy and Practice

  • Evidence-Based Decision-Making: State and federal policymakers rely on Dashboard insights to guide legislation, funding, and resource allocation.
  • Targeted Improvement Efforts: Health organizations and advocacy groups can pinpoint areas with limited primary care access and develop tailored initiatives to close gaps.
  • Community Empowerment: Local leaders and community stakeholders gain a clearer picture of the primary care landscape in their regions, fostering collaboration and building momentum for long-term reforms.

Looking Ahead

We’re proud to support HealthLandscape and the Milbank Memorial Fund in using data visualization to advance primary care. At Blue Raster, we see this work as central to our mission: empowering organizations with geographic insights to improve lives and communities. By leveraging the latest in GIS, analytics, and design, we are committed to driving innovation in healthcare—and beyond.

If you’d like to learn more about how our GIS-driven solutions can help your organization or project, contact us today. Let’s work together to turn your data into actionable, life-changing insights.

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Public Health & GIS: HealthLandscape Addresses Today’s Public Health Challenges

Posted on by Angela Wertman

Modern Solutions for Addressing Today’s Public Health Challenges

The American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) aims to strengthen family physicians and the communities they care for through prevention and public health initiatives. As part of this effort, their innovation arm, HealthLandscape, develops geospatial data visualization to help the community find insights to improve health care.

Zeroing in on Community Health Demographics

Blue Raster has been working with the organization for over a decade, creating and modernizing GIS solutions. Recently, the team moved the Community Data Portal from Flash to Java Script.

Using this portal, health providers and public health officials can filter the data most important to their communities and their area of practice. The configurable tool enables users to explore demographic, education, income, and health disparities and can be configured for any geographic area. The tool can ingest datasets from sources like the U.S. Census Bureau, the Appalachian Regional Commission, the Robert Wood Johnson County Health Rankings, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid…the possibilities are endless. Users can create side-by-side maps between indicators (for example, diabetes and poverty) to visualize potential relationships. Additionally, users can overlay infrastructure data such as interstate networks or locations of health facilities and start to visualize patterns between the two. Graphs and charts are available to see the numbers behind the data and reports can be automatically run off the filters. The solution uses Esri ArcGIS API for JavaScript, Node, React, and ArcGIS Enterprise and Portal for ArcGIS.

Public Health Tool: HealthLandscape Community Data Portal

Meeting the Demands of High Risk Populations

Similarly, Blue Raster developed the Local Needs Assessment application that helps identify high-risk areas based on social determinants of health (“cold spots”) and poor health outcomes (“hot spots”). Identifying and mapping these high-risk areas allows for targeted approaches. The solution allows users to explore relationships between these two and identify outliers by creating scatter plots. In addition, users can customize this solution to examine childhood health, geographic population health, mental health and more public health indicators.

HealthLandscape Local Needs Assessment
HealthLandscape Community HealthView

Health organizations are developing innovative ways to harness the data integration and spatial visualization power of GIS.

GIS plays a critical role in determining where and when to intervene, improving the quality of care, increasing accessibility of service, finding more cost-effective delivery modes, and preserving patient confidentiality while satisfying the needs of the research community for data accessibility. Contact us today to learn more!

Appalachia Community Data Portal

Posted on by Christina Nordling

Blue raster is pleased to announce the release of the newest HealthLandsape tool – the Appalachia Community Data Portal.

Created for the Appalachian region, the tool enables users to explore demographic, education, income, and health disparities for more than 400 Appalachia counties. The tool marries datasets from the the U.S. Census Bureau, the Appalachian Regional Commission, the Robert Wood Johnson County Health Rankings, and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid.

Economics

Using the Appalachia Data Portal tool, users can create side-by-side maps between indicators (for example, diabetes and poverty) to visualize potential relationships. Users can also overlay infrastructure data such as interstate networks or locations of Health Facilities, and start to visualize patterns between the two. Graphs and charts are available to see the numbers behind the data.

Explore the Appalachia Data Portal, and more health information tools, at healthlandscape.org.

Rethinking Health Mapping with Rich Visualizations

Posted on by Jessica Viel

Blue Raster is pleased to announce the release of the new version of HealthLandscape, an interactive web-based mapping tool for healthcare providers, advocates, researchers, and policy makers.  HealthLandscape Version 3, which was launched in October, enhances the power of this award-winning GIS application, which allows healthcare professionals to combine, analyze, and display health information in ways that promote understanding, improve outcomes, and reduce cost of healthcare.  In July 2011, HealthLandscape and UDS Mapper took first place in the Web-Based GIS Application category at the Esri International User Conference’s User Software Applications Fair.

Blue Raster upgraded HealthLandscape from a legacy server system (ArcIMS) to ArcGIS Server and Flex API to provide users with more dynamic applications and greater functionality.  Most notably, HealthLandscape’s anthology of health-related tools can now be combined, enabling the user to use them all in one mapping viewer.  Users can turn tools on and off depending on their data needs and display layers from multiple tools on the map at the same time.

The new version also makes it easier for healthcare professionals and advocates to combine their own data with existing health maps and public sources of health, socio-economic and environmental information.  Using the new QuickGeocodes tool, users can upload data from Excel spreadsheets to create instant health maps.  They can also use the new QuickThemes tool to upload state, county or zip code-level data to create thematic maps that show how health information varies from region to region.

Visit HealthLandscape and see for yourself how it conveniently brings together and communicates critical health information and trends with compelling custom maps.

Footprint Map of Medical School Graduates

Posted on by Christina Nordling

This year we launched an online data explorer tool for health care professionals and policy makers, called the Med School Mapper. The goal of this tool is to map the reach (or footprint) of medical school programs and graduates.

Med School Mapper

The Med School Mapper dramatically reduces the effort and time needed to identify communities that depend on a program’s or state’s graduates the most. It includes a footprint map showing which counties a state’s or school’s graduates are serving and how intensely. The map also shows:

  • if graduates are caring for underserved communities
  • whether graduates are practicing in rural communities
  • which areas of care they are focused on

This information is used by state policymakers to direct expansion funding for medical school programs. The tool was built using ArcGIS Server and Flex API. View the tool today, and see how it is capturing the impact of local and regional medical schools.

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