Several healthcare disasters have occurred in the past decade, and their occurrence has become more frequent recently due to one natural catastrophe after another. The medical application requirement for such a disaster management system includes effective, reliable, and coordinated responses to disease and injury, accurate surveillance of area hospitals, and efficient management of clinical and research information. Based on the application requirements, this case study describes a grid-based system in a health information supply chain that monitors and detects national infectious events using geographical information system (GIS), radio-frequency identification (RFID), and grid computing technology. This system is fault-tolerant, highly secure, flexible, and extensible, thus making it capable of operation in case of a national catastrophe. It has a low cost of deployment and is designed for large-scale and quick responses. Owing to the grid-based nature of the network, no central server or data centre needs to be built. To reinforce the responsiveness of the national health information supply chain, this case study proposes a practical, tracking-based, spatially-aware, steady, and flexible architecture, based on GIS and RFID, for developing successful infectious disaster management plans to tackle technical issues. The architecture achieves a common understanding of spatial data and processes. Therefore, the system can efficiently and effectively share, compare, and federate—yet integrate—most local health information providers and results in more informed planning and better outcome.
