GeoHealth Karnataka: A Geospatial Framework for Comprehensive Healthcare Accessibility Analysis

Healthcare accessibility continues to be an important issue in heterogeneous and rapidly growing areas such as Karnataka, India.In these settings, geographical, infrastructural, and socio-economic conditions complicate the access barriers to uniform services.Most conventional accessibility determinations are based on simplistic measures such as Provider-Population ratios or Euclidean distance, which do not suit the multi-faceted aspect of healthcare access.In this research, we introduce GeoHealth Karnataka, a new endto-end geospatial framework that incorporates advanced spatial analysis methods to assess healthcare accessibility holistically.The proposed method integrates high-resolution population rasters, mapping of healthcare facilities, travel-time estimation with friction surfaces, and advanced accessibility metrics such as the Enhanced Two-Step Floating Catchment Area (E2SFCA) approach.The framework surpasses traditional distance-based metrics by adding travel impedance, facility ZoIs (Zone of Influence), and socioeconomic factors in the calculations for accessibility.With an open-source GIS foundation, the implementation highlights marked advancements in detecting gaps across Karnataka's various districts.The system provides visualization and policy-meaningful measures that have the direct ability to inform resource allocation choices.Early case studies identify significant urban-rural differences and identify key areas for intervention, with the potential to revolutionise healthcare planning for more than 70 million residents.