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by yumbrand 1169 days ago
Interesting -- I have reservations on the breadth of OSM, but maybe that's different for hospital locations. I've looked into how representative it is for some large public companies like Target and Walmart, but I've found that consistently, less than half of all stores are actually represented; plus, with the addition of smaller out-patient locations like urgent care centers, I'm not sure how truthful this picture really is.
3 comments
toomuchtodo 1169 days ago
I think where OSM really shines is when you plug in other data sources that have large institutional support keeping them accurate and timely. You’re then providing mapping data off of that data, “drafting” off of it if you will.

For example, if you want to keep hospital state up to date, ingest public payment data from Medicare/Medicaid and distill down by location. When fiat is at stake, there is more at stake wrt data accuracy.

Edit: fsflyer points this out in a below comment, mea culpa

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35434775

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wcedmisten 1169 days ago
Yeah, I think using another data source for hospitals would be better, I'll look into using supplemental data as the other comment suggested.

I suspect that hospitals are better represented than other POIs because their building footprints are large and distinctive, allowing them to be mapped from aerial imagery.

I limited this analysis to facilities providing inpatient care to avoid that problem. I suspect clinics are less accurate POIs. They're pretty much indistinguishable from other retail businesses from aerial imagery alone.

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autokad 1169 days ago
hospitals can be challenging. lots get shut down, and the smaller ones have severely misplaced coordinates because these surveys go out to the hospitals and a clerk will fill them out with an address, and that address gets geocoded. The address they give is sometimes an address to a branch hospital, or a different building than the treatment center of interest. Very large hospitals have an issue in this way too, and since they are so big that difference can effect the map and access a lot.
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