Question
1. A researcher is working on a pain clinic program at the hospital and needs to find a way to easily measure distance between postal codes or FSAs and the different pain clinics. There are up to 2000 postal codes for the unique visits. Can you let me know if there is a product the researcher can use?
2. I know that that this is a legitimate use of the PCCF products (since the contact is an Assistant Professor) if they are simply writing a research paper for publication. I also know that the PCCF would be able to support this use (through GIS manipulation) with either “as the crow flies” distances or with other products for route mapping distances.
3. However, what if the research is being done simply to evaluate the program for the hospital’s purposes? Can I then provide the PCCF data for the project under our license? (I think that the answer is no, but want to confirm it).
Answer
1. There are no products that can provide this.
2. If you are using the Latitude and longitude on the PCCF file, please make sure you understand that they are the dissemination area, dissemination block, or block-face representative point and not the postal code (please refer to page 17 of the reference guide for more information).
3. No, unless the hospital has access to the PCCF product under a different licence other than the prof’s or the DLI.
