DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF A TELEMEDICINE SYSTEM IN NIGERIA
DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF A TELEMEDICINE SYSTEM IN NIGERIA
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Date
2008-04
Authors
YISAH, Ozohu Safinatu
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Abstract
In most under-developed or third world countries like Nigeria, there are very large
numbers of patients in the remote rural areas that need specific healthcare support
services at home. Due to shortages of medical experts, hospitals coupled with geographic
isolation and lack of opportunities for these experts, the few available medical experts are
often reluctant to serve in such poorer areas with lesser opportunities and advantages. As
a result of this, people living in these rural and poorer areas have limited access to basic
healthcare services and consequently receive lower quality healthcare services, compare
to those living in urban areas where best equipped hospitals and with medical experts are
distributed. Those patients living in the rural areas requiring the attention of healthcare
practitioners to meet their needs must travel to distant healthcare centres, which is quite
unaffordable due to the present state of medical emergencies.
Thus it has become very crucial and important to develop a robust system that will
drastically improve and change the present state of healthcare delivery services. In this
research work, an interactive-mode telemedicine environment is designed to provide
tools for overcoming the unequal distribution of medical experts, establishing meaningful
consultations between the rural health workers and specialists located in larger medical
centers.
The proposed system also provides opportunities for the healthcare workers to gain
access to vital information that can aid in the diagnosis of patient’s health state or the
development of suitable treatment plans and for the patients to fully enjoy an enhanced
healthcare service in the rural areas and urban cities.
The technological approach for the implementation of the proposed system is based on
open source solutions. The system is implemented on Windows 2003 network operating
system platform. Web server is apache extend with support for PHP. In recognition of the
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confidentiality of data contained in the system, communication network are protected
with open-(ssh) library for data encryption and role-based authentication is built into the
system as security pass mark for accessing information in the data base.
Description
A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE POSTGRADUATE SCHOOL
IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR
THE AWARD OF THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF SCIENCE IN
COMPUTER SCIENCE
DEPARTMENT OF MATHEMATICS
FACULTY OF SCIENCES
AHMADU BELLO UNIVERSITY
ZARIA
NIGERIA.
APRIL, 2008
Keywords
DESIGN,, IMPLEMENTATION,, TELEMEDICINE,, SYSTEM,, NIGERIA