A drive to provide equal access to anti-virals during the recent pandemic flu outbreak has led to Avon IM&T Consortium’s head of GIS, Trevor Foster winning the Runner-Up in Organizational Impact Award category of the 2010 Pitney Bowes Business Insight Meridian Awards.

GIS is used to map and analyse healthcare providers, population statistics, service development, travel and access, targets monitoring and other areas so that the NHS can plan its best use and location of many services.

During the pandemic, PCTs were tasked with ensuring that anti-virals were readily available to all their local populations and that each collection point should serve a maximum of 10,000 patients.

He devised a map showing all the existing pharmacies, plus the ones that would be community collection points, and segments showing areas covered within 10, 20 minute and further driving times.

Trevor has been invited to Miami to collect his award in May, his travel being paid for by GIS software and data suppliers.

Trevor, a former Army Cartographer who was involved in producing the first official maps of the Falklands during that conflict in 1982, said: “I was delighted to hear I had won this award especially as it is rare for people outside America to win a Meridian award.”

“There has been a lot of interest in our project and I think it is being taken up elsewhere in the country.”