MODELLING AN ENHANCED REMOTE PATIENT MEDICAL MONITORING SYSTEM IN NIGERIAN HOSPITALS

SOURCE:

Faculty: Physical Sciences
Department: Computer Science

CONTRIBUTORS:

Oji, I. V
Anigbogu, S.O
Osuagwu, O.E

ABSTRACT:

With the advancement of wireless technologies, wireless sensor networks can greatly expand our ability to monitor and track the conditions of patients in the healthcare area. Remote Medical Monitoring is one of the components of telemedicine capable of monitoring the vital signs of patients in a remote location and sending the results directly to a monitoring station. Ambulatory unobtrusive monitoring of the vital signs of the elderly and chronically ill patients is very crucial in helping to save their lives. The manual medical monitoring done in the Nigerian hospitals has a lot of challenges ranging from faulty instruments, negligence of duty on the part of the nurses left to do this monitoring , absence of doctors on call from their offices and so on. This thesis simulates the readings of the blood pressure and the pulse rate of patients based on the known causes of the high and low blood pressure and pulse rate respectively with a data structure that includes, age, health status, smoking habits, alcohol intake etc. The simulation is done with an application called the Mobile Health Information Management System that runs on a simulated mobile phone. The blood pressure and the pulse rate of the patient is simulated every 25 seconds and sent directly to the server where it enters an M/M/1 queuing model that operates on First In First Out (FIFO) basis, where it performs analyses on the data and keeps the packets of data in the queue as they arrive from where it sends it to the mobile user log file. In the server, there is another application software called the Integrated Hospital Information Management System which performs other hospital functions and contains the hospital database as well as the electronic medical records. The packets of data sent to the server are encrypted using the symmetric key encryption algorithm to prevent the records from unauthorised access. The patient id is generated and encrypted together with the patient’s medical records using a software called the Simulated Patient Data Software(SPDS) and can only be decrypted in the server using the encryption key only by authorised users. A survey type questionnaire and a face to face interview was conducted on the nurses and the patients of the Central Hospital Warri and a weighted average was used for the analysis. The Structured Systems Analysis and Design Method (SSADM), the Object Oriented Analysis and Design Method (OOADM) and prototyping were deployed to study, design and implement this simulation model. The software was developed in Java because of its web based features and its portability. The result of this research effort is the unobtrusive monitoring, evaluation and intelligent medical emergency detection of the blood pressure and pulse rate of patients in Nigerian hospitals and the notification of the medical personnel for immediate medical intervention. By this, continuous monitoring of these vital signs can be performed without interfering with the patients’ everyday activities or restricting their movement while protecting their medical records. This has the capacity of saving many lives of patients in our Nigerian hospitals that could have otherwise been lost. This thesis has heralded the ascendance of a functional telemedicine application in Nigeria.