United States International University - Africa (Nairobi, Kenya)
Sylvester A. Namuye, Leah Mutanu, Paul M. Okanda, Charles Magero, Jimmy Macharia, Patrick K.Wamuyu
The study proposes a cost efficient, flexible and adaptable approach for leveraging mobile and service oriented technology to improve health in developing economies. We draw these benefits from using the concept of Cloud computing i.e. providing Information as a Service (IaaS) and Software as a Service (SaaS) as services via the internet. Popular and readily available technology such as the mobile phone can aid in leveraging information access through Cloud computing. Further the use of Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD), a protocol used by Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) cellular mobile phones to communicate with service providers’ computers, will ensure that users without internet access can still readily access information. These concepts offer several benefits such as responsiveness, effectiveness and efficiency.
Our choice of the health sector is driven by the fact that one of the world’s main development challenges contained in the millennium declaration is Combating HIV/AIDS, malaria and other communicable diseases. Kenya also has a vision to create a globally competitive and prospective nation with a high quality of life by the year 2030. The recent Kenya economic Health Survey shows that the rate at which improvements in the health sector are currently occurring is very low. We hope to contribute to this vision by ensuring that health related information is accessible to all through an affordable and flexible solution. There is need to examine how we can ensure the health information supplied is contextualized to enable it address four key requirements regardless of the target audience or platform; accuracy, timeliness, relevance and accessibility.
While technology has contributed towards making patient treatment more efficient, existing computer based systems do not provide adequate support for elimination of prescription and dose errors. In order to address accuracy, this concept paper proposes tooffer support for diagnosis and prescription of medication to patients in such a way that medication errors (which largely occur due to human error) are significantly reduced. This will be achieved using an implementation of prescription standards that reflect current best practice as well as legal and professional guidelines relating to the use of medicines e.g. the British National Formulary (BNF),. Web service could be described as a method of communication or data exchange between two or more computer systems over a network regardless of the platforms on which the computer systems are implemented. It defines a standardized method that provides support for the integration of web-based applications using the eXtended Markup Language (XML), Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP), Web Services Description Language (WSDL) and Universal Description, Discovery and Integration (UDDI) open standards over an Internet protocol backbone. XML tags data, SOAP does data transfer, WSDL describes available services while UDDI lists what services are available. To address timeliness, this study proposes recording of data whilst ensuring synchronisation of treatment information between primary and secondary care using Web services. This is achievable through up-scaling of the integrated healthcare system which provides seamless sharing of data on real-time basis between primary and secondary care provision centres. Finally to address relevance, the study proposes the provision of early warning systems that do analysis of aggregated data from disparate primary and secondary health care centres and predict disease outbreaks, acting as early warning systems. The contextual information will be drawn from historical aspects (system data) as well as geographic location (the environment) which the system should be able to detect dynamically, allowing the early warning information to be generated at runtime.
ICT can provide a viable solution to the accessibility requirement via the use of Cloud computing for responsiveness, effectiveness and efficiency as described by IBM (2009). The study however recognizes that poor internet access has largely been responsible for limited access to the wealth of information available on the internet in remote areas. To this end, identification of an alternative means of accessing this much needed resource, that is readily available and accessible by the majority of the populace regardless of their physical location (such as the mobile phone) would go a long way toward providing a viable solution to the current infrastructural challenge. Further the use of Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD), a protocol used by Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) cellular mobile phones to communicate with service providers’ computers, will ensure that users without internet access can still access information.
The innovative aspect of this study is the proposal of a solution that is flexible through the concept of runtime software adaptation in Service Oriented Computing (SOC). An increasing important requirement of software is ensuring that the system can adapt quickly and effectively to changing business and system needs. Several problem specific runtime adaptation techniques have been put forward. We propose a solution that is generic and hence can be used to address any challenge presented by information access on any information or sector represented on the government portal.
Data will be collected to identify the growing health information needs of the citizenry and an adaptable SOC solution developed to bridge the gaps identified. The model will be tested and evaluated through the development of a service oriented prototype, implemented using current web service techniques and accessed through a simple mobile phone.
Key words: Unstructured Supplementary Service Data, Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM), Cloud Computing, Service Oriented Architecture, Dynamic Software Adaptation, Early Warning Systems medication errors, calculating doses, healthcare informatics, Web Services, British National Formulary (BNF), prescription standards.
Our choice of the health sector is driven by the fact that one of the world’s main development challenges contained in the millennium declaration is Combating HIV/AIDS, malaria and other communicable diseases. Kenya also has a vision to create a globally competitive and prospective nation with a high quality of life by the year 2030. The recent Kenya economic Health Survey shows that the rate at which improvements in the health sector are currently occurring is very low. We hope to contribute to this vision by ensuring that health related information is accessible to all through an affordable and flexible solution. There is need to examine how we can ensure the health information supplied is contextualized to enable it address four key requirements regardless of the target audience or platform; accuracy, timeliness, relevance and accessibility.
While technology has contributed towards making patient treatment more efficient, existing computer based systems do not provide adequate support for elimination of prescription and dose errors. In order to address accuracy, this concept paper proposes tooffer support for diagnosis and prescription of medication to patients in such a way that medication errors (which largely occur due to human error) are significantly reduced. This will be achieved using an implementation of prescription standards that reflect current best practice as well as legal and professional guidelines relating to the use of medicines e.g. the British National Formulary (BNF),. Web service could be described as a method of communication or data exchange between two or more computer systems over a network regardless of the platforms on which the computer systems are implemented. It defines a standardized method that provides support for the integration of web-based applications using the eXtended Markup Language (XML), Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP), Web Services Description Language (WSDL) and Universal Description, Discovery and Integration (UDDI) open standards over an Internet protocol backbone. XML tags data, SOAP does data transfer, WSDL describes available services while UDDI lists what services are available. To address timeliness, this study proposes recording of data whilst ensuring synchronisation of treatment information between primary and secondary care using Web services. This is achievable through up-scaling of the integrated healthcare system which provides seamless sharing of data on real-time basis between primary and secondary care provision centres. Finally to address relevance, the study proposes the provision of early warning systems that do analysis of aggregated data from disparate primary and secondary health care centres and predict disease outbreaks, acting as early warning systems. The contextual information will be drawn from historical aspects (system data) as well as geographic location (the environment) which the system should be able to detect dynamically, allowing the early warning information to be generated at runtime.
ICT can provide a viable solution to the accessibility requirement via the use of Cloud computing for responsiveness, effectiveness and efficiency as described by IBM (2009). The study however recognizes that poor internet access has largely been responsible for limited access to the wealth of information available on the internet in remote areas. To this end, identification of an alternative means of accessing this much needed resource, that is readily available and accessible by the majority of the populace regardless of their physical location (such as the mobile phone) would go a long way toward providing a viable solution to the current infrastructural challenge. Further the use of Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD), a protocol used by Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) cellular mobile phones to communicate with service providers’ computers, will ensure that users without internet access can still access information.
The innovative aspect of this study is the proposal of a solution that is flexible through the concept of runtime software adaptation in Service Oriented Computing (SOC). An increasing important requirement of software is ensuring that the system can adapt quickly and effectively to changing business and system needs. Several problem specific runtime adaptation techniques have been put forward. We propose a solution that is generic and hence can be used to address any challenge presented by information access on any information or sector represented on the government portal.
Data will be collected to identify the growing health information needs of the citizenry and an adaptable SOC solution developed to bridge the gaps identified. The model will be tested and evaluated through the development of a service oriented prototype, implemented using current web service techniques and accessed through a simple mobile phone.
Key words: Unstructured Supplementary Service Data, Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM), Cloud Computing, Service Oriented Architecture, Dynamic Software Adaptation, Early Warning Systems medication errors, calculating doses, healthcare informatics, Web Services, British National Formulary (BNF), prescription standards.
