Project Abstract

<p> This project title is written to help hospitals especially SHONAHAN HOSPITAL,<br>NSUKKA, Enugu in the areas they encounter problems in keeping their attendance<br>scheme for patient and the solution given to tackle problem such as transforming<br>the existing manual attendance scheme for patients system in which the existing<br>problems involved at the time was laziness of the Doctors to work, misplacement<br>of files, excessive loitering around of patient for their files and loitering of paper in<br>the office.<br>This software reports on our pilot evaluation of AN ELECTRONIC PATIENT<br>MANAGEMENT SYSTEM and their Doctors. The aim is to improve the quality<br>of care to patient and the information about them, as indicated by an improvement<br>in the effectiveness and efficiency of care and in an increase in patient’s<br>satisfaction.<br>This study makes clear that a thorough exploration of users needs before building<br>the system, using qualitative research methods may be crucial because it can<br>prevent data mismatch and maximize the chance that the eventual management<br>system meets its most important aim to enhance patient’s empowerment and<br>improve the quality of care services.<br>In order to handle this, I decided to introduce a new an electronic patient<br>management system for patients. The project dwells more on Computer duty<br>schedule. This is implemented with Visual Basic programming 6.0 language and<br>Microsoft Access for effective information keeping.<br>6 <br></p>

Project Overview

<p> INTRODUCTION<br>1.1 Background of the Study<br>An Electronic Patient Management System is any tool used to assist in the delivery<br>of clinical care from point of care initiation to completion. Tools include computer<br>based attendance scheme for patient, payment processing software and information<br>14<br>technology systems, blood group and genotype to avoid test result mismatch of<br>data.Electronic based attendance scheme for Patients is used by hospital to create<br>process and record their attendance scheme for patient’s information. This system<br>is used to calculate the nurse punctuate to work. It’s an effective tool in the hands<br>of the hospital management.<br>Duty is a term that conveys a sense of moral commitment to someone or<br>something. The moral commitment is the sort that results in action, and it is not a<br>matter of passive feelings or mere recognition. When someone recognizes a duty,<br>that person commits himself/herself to the cause involved without considering the<br>self-interesting courses of actions that may have been relevant previously. This is<br>not to suggest that living a life of duty precludes one from the best sort of life, but<br>duty does involve some sacrifice of immediate self-interest.Cicero is an early<br>philosopher who acknowledged this possibility. He discusses duty in his work “On<br>Duty”. He suggests that duties can come from four different sources:<br>1. It is a result of being human<br>2. It is a result of one’s personality place in life (your family, country, and job)<br>3. One’s own moral expectations for you can generate duties<br>From the root idea of obligation to serve or give something in return, involved in<br>the conception of duty, have sprung various derivative uses of the word; thus it is<br>15<br>used of the services performed by a minister of a church, by a soldier, or by any<br>employee or servant.Nurses today have a broad scope of responsibility as health<br>care providers that require them, under some circumstance, to exercise independent<br>professional judgment. When nurses exercise their judgment negligently, they may<br>be held liable because courts hold them to a correspondingly higher level of<br>accountability.Nurses have been held liable for their failure to monitor and/or<br>promptly respond to patients by informing physicians of significant changes in<br>patient’s condition. Under these types of circumstance, nurses have an affirmative<br>duty to exercise their professional judgment to ensure that all adequate steps are<br>taken to treat patients appropriately.<br>Usage of Information Technology (IT) remained comparatively very less in Health<br>sectors that other sector despite having more potential. Health Institution, which is<br>an important sector, should encourage IT usage resulting better productivity,<br>effectiveness, efficiency and economics leading to better health care of all. This<br>paper tells a success of implementation of ICT (Information Communication<br>Technology) in monitoring of medicine in health institution. System work on lowend<br>resources and E-mail (Electronic mail) based data transfer from District Head<br>Quarter to State Head Quarter.Implementation of Med-Centre in all the district of<br>Enugu result in checking on pilferage (the act of stealing amounts or small articles)<br>for medicine, increase in availability of medicine at Government institution,<br>16<br>increase in attendance of patients/doctor in health institution, optimal utilization of<br>medicine and data capturing at source, resulting in availability of error-free data at<br>Head Quarter.<br>Electronic Patient Management System is a certified automated payment<br>processing software. It is used by hospitals to input, process and display their<br>patient information. This system is used to manage and maintain electronic<br>medical records, patient information, prescriptions, lab reports etc. It is an effective<br>tool in the hand of the hospital management. Shonahan Hospital,Nsukka, Enugu<br>which is the case study, has patients whose fees are to be collected after treatment.<br>Shonahan Hospital, Nsukka, Enugu is one of the biggest and well equipped<br>hospitals in Nigeria. It has nine (9) training schools/programmers in the<br>hospital.From the studies carried out by the researcher, the hospital’s initial means<br>of recording was manual from automated system to computerized system which<br>lacked some features such as patients and nurses records.<br>The Hospital is a very important part of our society and it is imperative for<br>healthcare providers to do their jobs in an efficient and effective manner. Each day<br>hundreds of thousands of patients enter healthcare facilities challenging the<br>administration to run the show smoothly. The employees have to manage and<br>integrate clinical, financial and operational information that grows with the<br>17<br>practice.Information technology has made a significant impact on the healthcare<br>sector. The past decade has witnessed the foray of numerous information systems<br>and their resultant products into the hospital scenario. The number of investments<br>in computers and types of hospital systems has increased. This is because paper<br>medical records are cumbersome, bulky to use and difficult to manage. On the<br>other hand digital records are much easier to handle and improve the workflow<br>efficiency by integrating various tasks. The ultimate objective therefore, is to build<br>a network of interdependent centers such as the clinical laboratory, radiology<br>department, pharmacy, and so on in order to effectively meet the needs arising<br>within the hospital. Despite the fact that these individual centers are autonomous,<br>they are interdependent in terms of delivering services and to ensure effectiveness<br>of providing care. All this can be achieved through hospital information systems<br>that have formed the cornerstone of today’s modern hospital.<br>A patient is any person who receives medical attention, care or treatment. The<br>person is most often ill or injured and in need of treatment by a physician or any<br>other medical professional whereas an outpatient is a patient who is not<br>hospitalized for 24 hours or more but who visits a hospital, clinic, or associated<br>facility for diagnosis or treatment. Treatment provided in this fashion is called<br>ambulatory care.<br>18<br>This Electronic Patient Management System is necessary to ensure the medical<br>practitioner to maintain its operations in an organized and well-coordinated<br>manner. These solutions save time and run the operations using the best<br>mechanisms against liabilities. This system is especially helpful in organizing and<br>keeping patient records up-to-date. Patient names, records of treatment and<br>medicine given records are well maintained. Maintaining patient records is really<br>helpful when you are allowed to refer to the patient’s old history. Say for example,<br>you want to refer your old patients for mouth cancer or jaw piece ulcers and<br>cancers, you may be able to locate such records on the basis of their symptoms or<br>conditions as you had entered in the database in the past. By law hospitals are<br>required to record in the outpatient information register once at the beginning of<br>the morning session and once during the afternoon whether the pupil is present,<br>absent, engaged in an approved, or unable to attend due to exceptional<br>circumstances as defined in regulation. If compulsory hospital patients are absent<br>the register must show whether the absence is authorized or unauthorized. It must<br>also record the nature of any approved activities.By using this Electronic Patient<br>Management System, the department will provide the patients with convenience<br>and security of having their payment records been stored automatically into the<br>database for further processing. This automated method is the most advanced and<br>least expensive way to maintain and process patient’s payment records. If a<br>19<br>patient’s payment record is not found in the database, definitely that patient’s fees<br>has not yet been paid.<br>1.2 Statement of the Problem<br>Prior to the problem encountered with patient’s attitude to their check up and<br>treatment, the nurse’s laxity (laziness) over their duties, the need arose to develop a<br>software that will be able to solve the problem. The problem caused by the use of<br>manual method of keeping outpatient information and the use of manual method of<br>keeping attendance scheme for patients can only be solved by computerizing the<br>hospital attendance scheme for patients and computerizing the hospital outpatient<br>information system. The problems that this project is set to solve in the manual<br>method of keeping outpatient information are:<br>1. Improper documentation of patient payment record.<br>2. Difficulty in retrieving patient payment record.<br>20<br>1.3 Objectives of the Study<br>The primary purpose of this project is to enhance the reliability, security, and<br>convenience in the administration of Shonahan Hospital, Nsukka, Enugu, and to<br>have a database that contains complete and comprehensive details of patient<br>departmental payment records as well as a computer based attendance scheme.<br>The subsidiary objectives of this project are:<br>1. To improve checkup and treatment load functionality: Staffing level and<br>appropriate skill-mix per shift can be more easily determined by the shift<br>modules. This leads to less time spent in designing and amending roasters.<br>2. Better care planning: Time spent on care planning is reducing, while the<br>quality of what is recorded improved. This makes for more complete care<br>plans and more complete assessments and evaluations.<br>3. To facilitate diagnosis of patients thereby reducing patients wasting time<br>4. To exploit the use of ICT as a platform for medical services<br>5. To better drugs administration<br>6. For better maintenance of duty rosters<br>21<br>1.4 Significance of the Study<br>A patient management system works best as an early intervention; more success<br>was reported when targeted at more entrenched cases.While some patient’s care is<br>usually required, the nursing supervisee’s new checkup and treatment include<br>setting up checkup and treatment schedules, assigning checkup and treatment to a<br>nursing staff, and ensuring that each member of the nursing team is adequately<br>trained.This means that they must ensure that nursing records are correctly<br>maintained, that report is correctly given at each shift change that patient data are<br>up to date and that equipment and other supplies are in stock. Among these, other<br>areas where this project work is significant include:<br>1. Reducingmortality rate arising from important administration in the medical<br>service.<br>2. Helping to determine how computerized of hospitals has contributed to easy<br>medical services.<br>Furthermore, this work will serve as a reference work to students who are carrying<br>research on this topic.<br>22<br>1.5 Scope of the Study<br>The scope of this study is centered on designing anElectronic Patient management<br>system for patients. In fact it involves all parts of medical field in terms of record<br>keepings for patient’s records and all other aspect of field. However, this project<br>has been limited to GOPD (General Out–Patient Department) which includes the<br>following areas:<br>1. Recording of patient health record<br>2. Acceptance of patient/personal symptom and compliant<br>3. Provisional prescription and treatment.<br>1.6 Definition of Terms<br>Computer: This is an electronic device that can accept data information of inputs,<br>process the data and it have the ability to store the data and also retrieves it for<br>future use.<br>Data: These are groups of non-random symbols such as words, figures, values<br>which represent event and things that have taken place.<br>Database: This is the collection of related files.<br>Doctors: These are those that give medical aid to patients.<br>Duty: This is a term that conveys a sense of moral commitment to someone or<br>something.<br>23<br>Hardware: This can be defined as the physical component of the computer<br>system. Such as monitor, keyboard, printer, mouse. Etc.<br>Hospital: This is a health facility where people who are ill or injured are given<br>medical treatments and care.<br>File: These are collection of related records.<br>Information: this is a data that has been processed into a form which is<br>meaningful to the recipient and which is of perceived value in either current or<br>prospective decisions or action by the recipient.<br>Management: This is the process of getting activities completed efficiently with<br>and through other people.<br>Nursing: This is a profession focused on assisting individuals, families and<br>communities in attaining, maintenance, and recovering optimal health and<br>functioning. Modern definition of nursing defines it as a science and an act that<br>focuses on promoting quality of life as defined by persons and families, throughout<br>their life experiences from birth to care at the end of life.<br>Records: These are collection of related fields.<br>Software: This is an application or program that can be run on computer.<br>Storage: This is a processing of storage data and information using storage media.<br>24<br>1.7 Project Work Organization<br>The report is explained in details from Chapter 1, which contains the preliminary<br>part of the project that discuss the procedures/methods used in carrying out the<br>research.<br>Chapter two discuss the literature review of various researchers in the field and<br>their analysis.<br>Chapter Three discuss the system design and methodology that explains the<br>methods used.<br>Chapter Four explains the system analysis, Implementation and Integration that<br>delivers the implied system of the work<br>Chapter Five discussed the summary, recommendation and conclusion of the<br>project <br></p>