1.1 Introduction
Diagnosis system deals with the registration of patient information, doctor’s information and report, collection of diseases and infected syndrome, and diagnosis of these diseases. Computerized system poses high speed of processing precision, storage, its versatility and high retrieval system makes possible the completion of tasks that could never been achieved with manual system because of the difficulty of completing them on time for the results to be useful. The computer is an important tool that plays a good role in the analysis of any subject that is to be programmed. Before a computer can be successfully programmed and utilized, it must be studied properly. Hence, “computer Science” which is the study of computer and its programming is mainly about the design and analysis, modeling and application of computer related system.
As a prelude to other parts of this study, this chapter will discuss the background upon which this study was initiated, the statement of problems that led to this study, the Aim and Objectives of the study. Others are Significance of the study, Scope of work, Limitations of the Study and Definition of technical terms.
1.2 Background of Study
Expert system play an indomitable role in various disciplines and the assistance it renders to man cannot be overemphasized. The development of experts system that capture skills and expertise of a human expert has not been easy and date back to the Second World War, where experts of computer tried relentlessly to develop technique or systems that would allow act more intelligently than human. But recently, experts system have proven their value by aiding for example, medical professionals in diagnosing diseases and scheduling task as well mechanics in trouble shooting locomotive problems and configuring complex computer hardware.
The uses of expert system on medical diagnosis of malaria include the interest of the research because of some spectacular activities it accomplished and to bring the awareness of the software to the doorstep of the readers and other medical and paramedical personnel’s.
The software helps the junior doctors accompanied by a nurse in answering the calls of some patients with tedious problems. This also helps the doctors generating some wise questions from a patient, based on the problems confronting him in order to get rid of some outstanding irregularities. Some potentialities built-in which serve as a watch dog patients on the sick beds. It helps in alerting a medical practitioner on call of imminent dangers against a patient and alleviates nurses the task of engaging themselves routine visits. In like manner, developing one of such system to represent the repository of the knowledge of a medical doctor is as essential as any other expert system. To this end, this project, Expert System on the Diagnosis of non-communicable diseases is a necessity.
1.3 Statement of Problem
Investigation by this study reveals the following challenges of the existing Electronic Diagnosis System:
- File and record about patients are not properly kept.
- Drugs prescription is hardly ever done with the right age of the patient in mind.
- Error are easily made and hardly detected.
- Information is not well maintained.
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
1.4 Aim and Objectives of the Study
The aim of the study is to Design and Implement an Electronic Diagnosis System for diagnosing non-communicable diseases. In achieving this aim, the following specific objectives were laid out as follows to design and develop a diagnostic software that will:
- Ascertain whether the diseases could be diagnosed based on signs and symptoms.
- Aid clinicians in diagnostic procedures and offer prescription of medication.
- Enable flexibility in access to information through the World Wide Web or comprehensive knowledge bases.
- Examine a patient based on simple clinical signs, and to improve family and community health.
1.5 Significance of Study
The significance of expert systems in the diagnosis of malaria are too numerous to mention but a few has been listed out below;
- It takes a long time to train medical experts to know the symptoms of malaria and be able to give out the right drugs but with the proposed new system, only what is needed is the skills of operating the new system which requires entering patients information and their symptoms into the system and in turn the system brings out the type of malaria and the drugs to combat it.
- Consistent solution: Computers do not suffer some of the weaknesses of humans, such as getting tired or ill and they are more easily access than human experts. More time to evaluate decision result: Advice is obtained from the experts system quickly, leaving more time to weigh the possible result before action is taken.
- Human expert development is a continuous exercise but an expert system is built only once and updated continuously with new technologies.
- It will help to retain the skill of an expert medical doctor in case of any eventuality and can be useful in many hospitals, both private and government, cases where the expert is not on seat;
1.6 Scope of Study
The study focuses on the Design and Implementation of an Electronic Diagnosis System for diagnosing non-communicable diseases in Nigeria.
1.7 Limitations of the Study
During the course of this study, many things militated against its completion, some of which are:
- Time Constraint: The time frame given to accomplish this project was very short due to school academic calendar and it was carried out under pressure which made the researcher not to implement some necessary features.
- Establishment Policies: Establishment policies posed a serious limitation as most staffs are not ready to release information needed for this project work. There were lots of information needed from the staffs of this institution to enhance the study which took them time to release or they did not release at all for security purposes, hence the scope was reduced.
- Research material: availability of research material is a major setback to the scope of the study.
- Frequent power failure: This made the researcher append more money on fuel to ensure sustainable power.
- Financial Constraint: Insufficient fund tends to impede the efficiency of the researcher in sourcing for the relevant materials, literature or information and in the process of data collection (internet).
1.8 Definition of Terms
- Management: It is the co-ordination of all the resources of an Organization through the process of planning, Organization, directing and controlling
- System: Physical component of a computer that is used to perform certain task.
- Data: Numbers, Text or image which is in the form suitable for Storage in or processing by a computer, or incomplete information.
- Information: A meaning full material derived from computer data by organizing it and interpreting it in a specified way.
- Input: Data entered into a computer for storage or processing.
- Output: Information produced from a computer after processing.
- Information System: A set of interrelated components that collect (or retrieve), process, store and distribute information to support decision making and control in an organization.
