Software Implementation of an Automated Medical Diagnosis and theraphy System

Introduction

1.1 Background Of The Study

Medical diagnosis, (often simply termed diagnosis) refers both to the process of attempting to determine or identifying a possible disease or disorder to the opinion reached by this process. A diagnosis in the sense of diagnostic procedure can be regarded as an attempt at classifying an individual’s health condition into separate and distinct categories that allow medical decisions about treatment and prognosis to be made. Subsequently, a diagnostic opinion is often described in terms of a disease or other conditions.

In the medical diagnostic system procedures, elucidation of the etiology of the disease or conditions of interest, that is, what caused the disease or condition and its origin is not entirely necessary. Such elucidation can be useful to optimize treatment, further specify the prognosis or prevent recurrence of the disease or condition in the future.

Medical care has increased its extent, direction and purpose. It is continually evolving in response to perceive needs and demands. The management of health care delivery and services involves considerable amount of medical records and managerial data, which have to be collected, stored, selectively retrieved, updated and statistically analyzed.

With the rapidity growth of modern technology, especially computer technology in all fields of human endeavour, i.e professionals, scientist, education, industrial and even government activities, etc; necessitate the need for various sectors of the economy to be acquainted with at least basic knowledge of computer application in their day to day operations.

Therefore medical diagnosis and therapy system involves the state of medical knowledge of a particular disease, patient history, patient examination and drugs remedy. The standing orders which are disease symptom, patient history, patient examination, diagnosis and therapy which is called the hierarchical order gives basic health workers legal protection for providing primary health care.

They provide a systematic framework for history taking and physical examination of patient. They facilitate a knowledge bank and timely recall of accurate information about specific disease for the purpose of accurate diagnosis and therapy, also to provide standard procedures for health care delivery and evaluation.

1.2 Statement Of The Problem

Disease diagnosis and treatment constitute the major work of physicians. Some of the time, diagnosis is wrongly done leading to error in drug prescription and further complications in the patient’s health. It has also been noticed that much time is spent in physical examination and interview of patients before treatment commences. The clinical decision support system (CDSS) shall address these problems by effectively providing quality diagnosis in real-time.

1.3 Aims And Objectives Of The Project

The aims of this project includes:

1. To help in bringing about the best, most efficient and effective way of medical diagnosis and therapy system.
2. To examine the need for an automated medical diagnosis and therapy system
3. To help in providing a systematic framework for history taking
4. To help in talking patient problem more easier
5. To facilitate a knowledge bank and timely recalled for accurate information about specific diseases.

1.4 Significance Of The Study

Advances in the areas of computer science and artificial intelligence have allowed for development of computer systems that support clinical diagnostic or therapeutic decisions based on individualized patient data. Clinical decision support (CDS) systems aim to codify and strategically manage biomedical knowledge to handle challenges in clinical practice using mathematical modeling tools, medical data processing techniques and artificial intelligence

(A.I.) methods. Its significance is also seen in its ability to:

1. Provide diagnostic support and model the possibility of occurrence of various diseases or the efficiency of alternative therapeutic schemes.
2. Reduce the potential for harmful drug interactions, prescription errors and adverse drug reactions.
3. Enable clinicians report adverse drug reactions to the relevant authorities.
4. Promote better patient care by enhancing collaboration between physicians and pharmacists.

1.5 Scope Of The Study

Due to the fact that it is difficult to develop an expert system for diagnosing all diseases at a time, financial and time constraints, this research is limited to medical diagnosis and treatment for malaria, typhoid fever and pneumonia. The therapy covers severe and uncomplicated cases of the treatment of extreme or severe associated cases in patients such as cerebral malaria which causes insanity, blondness, asthma, tuberculosis and so on.

The study will also involve method(s) of diagnosis especially the patient history, physical examination and request for clinical laboratory test but will not go into how these tests are carried out. Rather, it will only make use of the laboratory and treatment.

1.6 Limitation Of The Study

In the course of this study, a major constraint experienced was that of time factor and insufficient finance. Others include the inevitability of human error and bias as some information were obtained via interpersonal interactions, interviews and research, making some inconsistent with existing realities or out rightly incorrect.

Great pains were however taken to ensure that these limitations are at their very minimum and less impactful on the outcome of the work.

1.7 Methodology

Below are the methods used in collecting data during my research. These include.

Interview:

The researcher went to the hospital under study. The researcher carried out some interview with the head of department of medical diagnosis and therapy system to get some data used in this project.

Browsing:

The researcher browse through the internet to get some information which was used for this study while also obtained some information through the medical website (http://www.medical.co.uk)

1.8 Definition Of Terms

Consultation File:

This is the file that contains different set of procedure that used for medical diagnosis and therapy supported by the system.

Therapy System:

This is the healing treatment of the disease identified.

Medical Diagnosis:

This is the identification of a disease or conditions after observing its sign.

NNGHSS:

Nigeria National basic Health Service Scheme.

Master File:

This is a file of data, which a principal source of information for a job. It can be updated or amended as necessary in relation to the condition of patient.

Disease Symptoms:

This is sign, which is observed by the practitioners from any test.

Patient History:

This is the relevant data about the history of patient that have been objected formulated and stored in a master file.

Patient Examination:

This is when patient are examined physically and laboratory tests are carried out and recorded.

Diagnosis:

This is the output of the examination recorded.

Therapy:

This is the solution to the suspected disease.

1.9 Software Used

Visual Basic 6.0 Version

The reason why visual basic is being choosing for soft define are:

1. Its main or event driven programming language
2. It support active X data object
3. It posses flexible and reliable data base management system
4. Its object oriented in nature
5. Its support API i.e Application programming interface which provides an interactive graphic user interface.
6. Anti-virus for removal and deleting of virus on the disk or any other software that can function in the same way.

Note: Window 98 is used because it offer 32 bit multi-tasking capabilities likewise window 95.