DEVELOPMENT OF AN ENHANCED HEALTH SURVEILLANCE SYSTEM

Abstract

This research work designs and develops an enhanced health surveillance system for healthcare systems and services. Health surveillance system enables healthcare workers to easily detect, analyse, prevent and promptly respond to the outbreak of communicable diseases in an area or region and also facilitate efficient healthcare service delivery. The early detection of infectious diseases is very critical for an early response and hence control of disease outbreaks. Manual healthcare surveillance system is time consuming, labour-intensive and quite expensive to manage especially during disease outbreaks and natural disasters. The healthcare surveillance system developed is an online platform that allows medical professionals to enter records of prevalent diseases, communicable ailments and disease outbreaks in their locations which is made available to a monitoring and regulating agency of government or non-governmental health organizations. An enhanced health surveillance system allows for the prompt response to the colossal effect the disease could cause, preventing an epidemic and allowing a global share of information to enable easier management of such diseases in other climes. Enhanced health surveillance system will be beneficial to  the health practitioners, the government  among  others. This  system was designed using Object Oriented Analysis and Design (OOAD) and implemented using jQuery Client Side Scripting language, PHP server side scripting language and MYSQL relational database management system.

Chapter 1:   

Introduction

1.0   Introduction

One of the greatest challenges facing the health sector in Nigeria is the non- availability and non-integration of modern automated systems in the provision of good health services. Poor knowledge of the nature, symptoms, causes and prevention of infectious diseases in Nigeria has posed a very big difficulty to the populace. This is as a result of the inability of the health professionals in Nigeria to have a designated forum where users could visit and be educated in terms of disease outbreaks. Consistent observation shows that medical facilities and institutions in Nigeria at present, process and maintain their records manually thereby making it vulnerable to natural disasters such as fire outbreaks, flood or they might even be damaged by insects. Also, there is no recognized means of instant dissemination of information concerning disease outbreaks in the country. Health institutions in Nigeria rely on the media such as newspapers, radio stations, Tv stations for the dissemination of information concerning disease outbreaks. They also rely on churches, mosques, schools, market places etc. Information gotten from these sources could be highly misleading and harmful to the society. A typical example happened on August 8, 2014 when rumour had it that all Nigerians should bath with salt and water to get rid of the dreaded Ebola disease. The information was not only false but it misled the entire public because there was no recognised system where health professionals update information about such occurrences in Nigeria.

Health surveillance according to [1] is the ongoing systematic collection, analysis, interpretation and dissemination of data concerning a health related event for use in public health domain in order to reduce diseases, deaths of individuals and to improve health and continuous well-being of individuals. It is of three categories namely: syndromic surveillance systems, laboratory surveillance systems and the web-based surveillance systems. Syndromic surveillance systems are early warning systems for reporting disease outbreaks. Laboratory surveillance systems gather their data from clinics or public health laboratories. Web-based surveillance systems are designed to collect information from online sources such as facebook, twitter, internet and news media reports. Some web-based surveillance systems have already been developed. Some of which include HealthMap, the Program for Monitoring Emerging

Diseases (ProMED-mail), Biocaster and Global Public Health Intelligence Network (GPHIN). These systems mostly operate in the developed  continents like Asia,  Europe and North America.

The developed enhanced health surveillance system will aid the health professionals to promptly report infectious disease outbreak once it is confirmed. It will also enable them to identify and disseminate disease outbreak information more rapidly. Surveillance systems generate data that help public health officials understand existing and emerging infectious and non-infectious  diseases. Without  surveillance,  public  health  officials  would  be  wasting precious resources and time finding the cause of disease outbreaks. Understanding the cause of diseases involved helps scientists understand where and how to intervene. It will also help health professionals on how to handle patients so that they will not be infected during treatment of patients.

The enhanced health surveillance system is an aid to the government in times of policy development, injury prevention, maternal and child healthcare, and public water and sewage treatment. More so, it will guide the government to demonstrate the need for public health intervention programs and resources, and allocate resources during public health planning – areas which are prone to attacks, riverine areas and areas close to the border areas will be given maximum consideration than others. Other benefits of this system to the government include: enables the government to make a quick response to the area where there is disease outbreak in order to prevent the spread of the disease to the entire country, monitoring the effectiveness of prevention and control measures and intervention strategies and lastly, it can also help the government in planning through the utilization of health surveillance data. To the general populace, it will create an avenue where the general public will be educated properly on the nature, symptoms, causes and prevention of infectious diseases and proper medium of dissemination of disease outbreak information in Nigeria.

With all these, the importance of an enhanced health surveillance system cannot be over emphasised. Users can visit the online platform to seek authentic and professional information relating to health issues and adequate measures can be taken to control disease that affect food, resources and environment.

1.1   Statement of the Problem

The following problems were observed in the manual system:

i.      Poor knowledge of the nature, symptoms, causes and preventions of infectious diseases in Nigeria. At present, health professionals in Nigeria are unable to equip the general public about the dangers caused by infectious diseases and how to curb that menace.

ii.      The vulnerability of the paper records, especially during cases of natural disasters. Any disease outbreak recorded on paper can easily be destroyed by insects, flood or fire outbreak

iii.       Lack of globalization of disease outbreaks trends; there is no recognized means of instant dissemination of information concerning disease outbreaks in the country.

1.2   Aim and Objectives of the Study

The aim of this project is to develop an enhanced health surveillance system for disease control and management.

The specific objectives are to develop a system that can:

i.    Crawl the internet and generate various communicable or infectious diseases in Nigeria;

ii.     Provide  a  centralized  database  for  storing  captured  infectious  disease  outbreak information;

iii.    provide an online geographic information system (GIS) for reporting disease outbreaks;

and

iv.     Inform the masses on the prevention strategies of any communicable disease and infections outbreak.

1.3   Significance of Study

This project work will be beneficial to health professionals, government and the general public. Health professionals: it will aid the health professionals to promptly report infectious disease

outbreak once it is confirmed. It will enable health professionals to identify and disseminate disease outbreak information more rapidly. Surveillance systems generate data that help public health   officials   understand   existing   and    emerging   infectious   and   non-infectious diseases. Without surveillance, public health officials would be wasting precious resources and time finding the cause of disease outbreaks. Understanding the cause of diseases involved helps

scientists understand where and how to intervene. It will also help health professionals how to handle patients so that they will not be infected during treatment of patients.

The government: it will aid the government in policy development in terms of injury prevention, maternal and child health, and public water and sewage treatment. Helps the government to demonstrate the need for public health intervention programs and resources, and allocate resources during public health planning – areas which are prone to attacks, riverine areas and areas close to the border areas will be given maximum concentration than others. It will also aid the government to respond quickly to the area where there is disease outbreak in order to prevent the spread of the disease to the entire country. Monitoring the effectiveness of prevention and control measures and intervention strategies is also an advantage of this research work. It can also help government in planning through the utilization of health surveillance data.

The general populace: it will educate the general public about the nature, symptoms, causes and prevention of infectious diseases in Nigeria.

1.4   Scope of the Study

This  project  was  developed  to  cover early detection  and  reporting of  infectious  disease outbreaks in Nigeria. Its source of data collection is limited to reports generated from information entered by health professionals including doctors, nurses, medical lab scientists and pharmacists. Users can only view reports to get information regarding to particular disease or location without permission to enter or make change to existing data.

1.5   Limitations of Study

    Unavailability of health surveillance data due to the manual nature of the existing system posed a very big difficulty for this work.

    Timeliness: due to the limited time of this work, the enhanced surveillance system did not provide timely data. The Timeliness has two components which are timeliness after the occurrence of the health event and timeliness of access to data.

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