Towards the design of primary health care web based system: an introductory approach

Abstract

Background/Objective: A primary health care center provides first contact, person focused and ongoing care overtime that meets the health related needs of the people. Routine activities in a primary health facility include;consultation and diagnoses of diseases by physicians, provision of treatment facilities, facility for admitting patients (providing beds, nursing, medicines) and immunization of patients/children. Documentation of patient information, such as medical, personal, financial or recording of medical personnel information on paper is at riskof being stolen, affected by fire outbreaks and misplaced by employees. The staff experience difficulty in timelylocation of records, sorting documents and identifying key pieces of information. It is nearly impossible toaccurately account for each person who accesses a paper based file and audit their use of that record. This meansthat individuals can access data without permission and make copy of documents without anyone knowing. Thereis no centralized secure database where information collected can be stored thereby making it difficult to prepareaccurate and prompt reports. Therefore, there is a need for the use and application of ICT tool. The main aim ofthis study is to design a web based system to control the flow of patients and staff data in the primary health carefacility. Methods/Design: The study design was spiral model and iterative model. The logical and physical designtools used include Data flow and Use case Diagrams for the proposed system. Results: Keeping in view a strong need for managing the various important information fast and efficiently, Primary Health Facility InformationSystem (PHIS) has been designed awaiting further development. Proper analysis and assessment of the designed system indicates an efficient, usable and reliable records-management system, which when developed willadequately meets the minimum expectations that were set for it initially. A complete design of a database application for searching and locating patient folders has been carried out. Conclusion: The new PHIS willprovide better services for healthcare providers such as reduction in time taken to find a folder, accuracy andtimeliness of record preparation and so on. If this study is implemented, it will go a long way to eliminate data redundancy, inconsistency and improve on the integrity of the data stored in the system.Keywords: Data, Web Site, Web Browser, Hyper Text Markup Language, Information