Intelligence Engine
Her-Zone maps South Africa into 1,480 operational zones. Each zone carries demographics, healthcare infrastructure, pharmacy access, disease burden, education, water quality, safety, and economic activity data.
The foundation layer is Creative Commons. What we add is the integration, the analysis framework, and the commercial application specific to your category.
1,480
Zones
Geographic units of analysis
4,300+
Pharmacies
Mapped and classified
44
Data Sources
Integrated into Her-Zone
13
Flu Seasons
Of surveillance data
Why Zone-Level Matters
Provincial averages tell you almost nothing useful. Your national market share is a single number that hides everything that matters.
In one district you hold 28%. In another, 6%. In the urban centres of that second district, 19%. In the rural zones of the first, 3%. The national number averages all of this away.
Disease burden varies by zone. Pharmacy access varies by zone. Population age profiles vary by zone. A product strategy built on provincial averages misses the geography entirely.
Her-Zone makes the geography visible. What you do with it is your decision.
Three Layers of Intelligence
Her-Zone is structured in three layers. Each layer adds resolution. The foundation is open. The intelligence and commercial layers are where the value compounds.
Foundation Layer
Creative Commons BY 4.0
Zone boundaries, census demographics, school locations, municipal finance indicators, water quality scores. Free and open. Built from Stats SA, National Treasury, Department of Basic Education, Department of Water and Sanitation.
Intelligence Layer
Licensed
Disease burden modelling, flu surveillance and prediction, infection risk indices, healthcare desert scoring, pharmacy access analysis. Built from NICD sentinel surveillance, WHO data, and Herbst Group proprietary models.
Commercial Layer
Client-specific
Your syndicated data integrated with geographic intelligence. Category sizing at zone level. Territory design. Pharmacy network analysis. Call planning grounded in geography, not postcodes.
Where the Data Comes From
Every source is documented. Every integration is traceable. Her-Zone uses public authoritative sources for the foundation layer. No data is estimated where it can be measured.
Statistics South Africa
Census demographics, population by age cohort
National Treasury
Municipal finance, economic indicators
National Institute for Communicable Diseases
Sentinel flu surveillance, outbreak data
Department of Basic Education
School locations, quintile data, enrolment
Department of Water and Sanitation
Water quality scores by municipality
South African Police Service
Safety indices by zone
NASA VIIRS
Satellite nightlight economic activity measurement
World Health Organisation
Global health surveillance frameworks
Plus commercial healthcare intelligence sources for pharmacy location data. 44 sources integrated in total.
What It Enables
Territory Design
Territory boundaries based on workload, geography, and commercial opportunity. Not postcodes.
Category Analysis
Therapeutic area sizing at zone level. Where your category is growing. Where it is declining. Where competition is thin.
Pharmacy Access
Which pharmacies stock your category. Where dispensing gaps exist. How pharmacy access shapes commercial opportunity by zone.
Disease Surveillance
Flu season prediction across 13 years of data. Infection risk scoring. Outbreak susceptibility by zone.
Call Planning
Rep call plans grounded in geographic reality. Drive times, pharmacy density, and workload index inform every route.
Launch Planning
Product launch sequencing by zone. Where to deploy first based on pharmacy access, disease burden, and competition.
Coverage and Transparency
Her-Zone covers all 9 provinces, 52 districts, and 1,480 zones. Demographics cover the full population of 61.4 million.
Pharmacy mapping currently covers approximately 4,300 pharmacies from commercial and public sources. This is not the full national register. We are transparent about coverage because overstating data coverage is worse than understating it.
The foundation layer is released under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International. You can use it, build on it, redistribute it. Attribution required, commercial use permitted.
We publish what we know. We disclose what we do not.
Want to See Your Category at Zone Level?
Tell us the therapeutic area. We will show you what zone-level analysis reveals. No commitment. Just a conversation about what your data could be telling you.