COLLEGE OF COMPUTING AND INFORMATICS

DEPARTMENT OF INFORMATION SYSTEMS

PROPOSAL SUBMISSION ON mHealth
SUBMITTED BY

NAOL EDOSA CIR/228/08

ESUBALEW ASRAT CIR/116/08
NITSIHIT ENAWGAW CIR/234/08
WORKITU GADISA CIR/292/08
DAGIM TADESE CIR/136/07

SUBMITTED TO INFORMATION SYSTEMS DEPARTMENT

WOLKITE, ETHIOPIA, DEC 5, 2018

SUBMISSION DATE 17/03/2011

Contents
Abstract ......................................................................................................................................................... ii
1. Introduction ........................................................................................................................................... 3
1.1. Background statement ................................................................................................................... 4
1.2. Statement of the problem .............................................................................................................. 4
1.3. objectives ...................................................................................................................................... 4
1.3.1. General objective ...................................................................................................................... 4
1.3.2. Specific Objective ..................................................................................................................... 5
1.4. Functional Requirement ................................................................................................................ 5
1.5. Non-functional Requirement......................................................................................................... 6
1.6. Scope and Limitation .................................................................................................................... 7
1.6.1. Scope ......................................................................................................................................... 7
1.6.2. Limitations ................................................................................................................................ 7
1.7. Feasibility Study ........................................................................................................................... 8
1.7.1. Technical Feasibility ............................................................................................................. 8
1.7.2. Economic Feasibility............................................................................................................. 8
1.7.3. Operational Feasibility .......................................................................................................... 8
1.7.4. Political Feasibility ............................................................................................................... 8
1.7.5. Schedule Feasibility .............................................................................................................. 9
1.8. The significance and targeted beneficiary..................................................................................... 9
1.9. Methodology ................................................................................................................................. 9
1.9.1. Data collection Methodology .................................................................................................... 9
1.9.2. Data analysis methodology ..................................................................................................... 10
1.9.3. Data implementation methodology ......................................................................................... 10
1.10. Schedule and Budget ............................................................................................................... 12
1.10.1. Budget ..................................................................................................................................... 12
1.10.2. Schedule .............................................................................................................................. 13
References ................................................................................................................................................... 14

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Abstract
Mobile technology enables health-care organizations to extend health-care services by providing
a suitable environment to achieve mobile health (mHealth) goals, making some health-care
services accessible anywhere and anytime. Introducing mHealth could change the business
processes in delivering services to patients. mHealth could empower patients as it becomes
necessary for them to become involved in the health-care processes related to them. This includes
the ability for patients to manage their personal information and interact with health-care staff as
well as among patients themselves.

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 1. Introduction
Health-care staffs have always been critical factors in the health-care process. They have several
responsibilities in dealing with their patients,1 including assisting doctors in recording patients’
personal and medical conditions, advising or educating patients and their families on health issues
related to the patients, operating medical equipment, administering medications and treatment, and
assisting patients for follow-up and further treatment or rehabilitation.2
Advances in mobile technology require a redesign in the roles of health-care professionals in caring
for patients online. Nowadays, health-care staffs increasingly use Information and Communication
Technology (ICT) to improve services3 and perform their duties in many ways like nurses’ work
in accessing and updating patients’ history online. However, services can be significantly
increased through mobile technology as most patients nowadays have mobile devices to access
services.
Interactions between health-care staffs and patients can be done online or partly online, and all
information related to these interactions can be stored automatically or semi automatically (if they
are done partly online) in electronic format that can be easily accessed or processed.4
Recent Web technology has allowed various modes of interaction and at the same time provided
new services through social networks to empower patients. Patients are enabled with the ability to
access their electronic health records (EHRs) through the Web, as most of them own smart mobile
devices such as smartphones that can be used to access the Internet. This means that providing
services accessible through this media (mHealth) is advantageous toward patients as it empowers
them. Thus, this needs to be properly designed, and new roles for health-care staffs need to be
properly defined.5 Various mobile services offered by mHealth can revolutionize health-care
practices in the context of managing patients through smartphones or other mobile devices.6
In order to support mobile services through the mHealth initiative, this study proposes the concept
of an online health educator (OHE). An OHE is a well-trained person or multiple individuals or an
interprofessional team who are dedicated to manage and look after mHealth services. The OHE
establishes patients’ relationship and the duty to provide caring through mHealth and continues
maintaining throughout the interaction, including any information on follow-up and ongoing
health care through mHealth services.

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 1.1. Background statement

Mobile phone has been one of the most technologically ubiquitous influences over the past decade.
Mobile phone use has changed from a perceived item of luxury to an everyday necessity for many
people. Given the widespread availability of mobile technology, there is increasing interest in the
potential of interventions utilizing these technologies to enhance medical treatment. Smartphones
are therefore changing many industries, including the medical industry. Africa as a whole lag far
behind compared to the richer regions of the world. Africa often have challenges in medical
information, access to healthcare, treatment excellence and affordability. However, the speedy
spread of mobile phones in so many of its countries is an extraordinary phenomenon, exclusively
in the framework of their enormous economic and social challenges. Mobile technology is an
example of such technologies that are readily available, accessible and affordable worldwide that
can help African countries to solve their healthcare delivery challenges. This project explored and
addressed the possible use of smartphones in providing basic health services in Ethiopia using
health professionals.

1.2. Statement of the problem

Governments and stakeholders across the continent are expressing interest in mHealth as a
harmonizing strategy for strengthening health systems and attaining the health-related Millennium
Development Goals (MDGs) in low and middle-income countries. This interest has been
established into a sequence of mHealth deployments globally that are providing early proof of the
potential for mobile technologies. mHealth applications are being tested in such various
developments as improving timely access to emergency and general health services and
information, managing patient care, reducing drug shortages at health clinics, enhancing clinical
diagnosis and treatment adherence, among others. Peoples need some awareness about diseases,
especially for prevention, and also for cure.

1.3. objectives

1.3.1. General objective

The goal of this project was to determine the actual health and medical needs of citizens that may
be addressed by medical information technologies. The results may contribute to the functional
design and development of health management and appointed treatment-oriented mobile apps.
Objective of this project is to provide better health awareness to societies and to help patients to
get some help about their disease and also to communicate with other patients too.

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 1.3.2. Specific Objective

In order to fulfill the above general objective, we have the following specific objectives:
□ Gathering different requirements
□ Identifying different health related projects and also related researches.
□ Analyzing requirements
□ Designing the proposed system based on requirements
□ Implementation the proposed system
□ Testing the proposed system against the requirements

1.4. Functional Requirement

The functional requirement is all about the systems functionalities and services. This system has
the following functional requirements:

□ Patients

✓ Can register and have their own account

✓ They manage their own account
✓ They may communicate with other patients and also doctors or health offices
✓ They may give feedback for doctors
✓ They may search for specific diseases
✓ They may get some training from experts
✓ They may arrange some appointment with doctors

□ Doctors

✓ Arrange appointment for patients

✓ Answer patients’ questions
✓ Communicate with patients and also other doctors
✓ Give some training
✓ Manage their own account
✓ Communicate with health offices
✓ Mentoring patients on preventative techniques
✓ Examining patients and give them some medication clues

□ Admin

✓ Can manage users accounts

✓ Helping users incase they forget their password

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 □ Health Offices

✓ Accept the patient’s feedback

✓ Give some recommendation for doctors
✓ Preparing some forums for experts
✓ Preparing tutors on diseases
✓ Give support for users and other experts

1.5. Non-functional Requirement

Non-functional requirements are attributes that either the system or the environment must have.
Some of these are requirements that many stakeholders gravitate to, and some are requirements
few if any end users recognize are needed.
□ Usability
• The system should be sufficiently intuitive to allow new users to learn basic
operations within one day of use.
• The end user will be able to access any page with sub-second response time and will
not be required to move to more than two screens to complete a task.
□ Reliability
• With the exception of a major disaster that disables the entire community, we will
have sufficient local and remote redundancy to power down all none critical
systems. All critical systems will run on a backup generator.
□ Performance specifications typically refer to response time, transaction throughput, and
capacity. For example:
• While executing a search for a medication, the system must be able to display 20
results per page.
□ Supportability refers to the application’s ability to be easily modified or maintained to
accommodate typical usage or change scenarios. For example:
• The system will allow users to create new workflows without the need for
additional programming.
• The system will allow the operations analyst to modify a clinical decision support
rule after obtaining applicable approval.
□ Interoperability refers to the ability of one application to exchange data with another.
Interoperability requires the adoption of standards that enable interfaces to be written.
Interoperability may also incorporate concepts of connectivity, messaging, and interactive
portals. For example:
• A provider portal is available to provide oversight of services between the hospital
and the physician office.
□ Scalability generally refers to the ability to increase the number of users or applications
associated with the product.

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 □ System requirements generally include required operating systems, commercial-grade
software development tools (e.g., reusable components), specific hardware or platform
requirements, and any environmental requirements. Some would include reliability and
performance requirements in system requirements, but these may be issuing that end users
are particularly concerned about and may best be separated (as described above).

1.6. Scope and Limitation

1.6.1. Scope

mHealth has several applications including, education and awareness, training and communication
for health workers and diagnostic and treatment support.
The system has the following scopes:
□ Health services monitoring and reporting
□ Health related m-learning for the general public
□ Training and continuing professional development for health workers
□ Health information and data
□ Results management
□ Order entry/management
□ Decision support
□ Electronic communication and connectivity
□ Patient support
□ Administrative processes
□ Reporting and population health management

1.6.2. Limitations

The limitation of this project is that, it does not consider payment for services. In addition to this
sometimes the doctors may be busy and the patients may not get the doctors.

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 1.7. Feasibility Study

1.7.1. Technical Feasibility

This assessment focuses on the technical resources available to the organization.

This project is technically feasible because all resources needed to implement
this project is available in our university. This system is feasible in terms of
hardware and software requirements, since it uses currently available hardware’s
and software’s.

1.7.2. Economic Feasibility

Our project is economically feasible, because the materials we use to implement our
system is already available and no need of new hardware or software. It is cost
effective.

1.7.3. Operational Feasibility

This study helps analyze and determine whether the business needs can be fulfilled
using the proposed solution or not. It helps to study if the business problem is worth
solving. So. Our system is operationally feasible, since it fulfills the patients’ needs
and helps them to get information on some diseases and also to communicate and make
appointment with the doctors.

1.7.4. Political Feasibility

This area investigates if the proposed system conflicts with legal requirements like data
protection acts or social media laws. This system is politically feasible since it is not
against any rules and regulations of our country or the health care rules and regulations.

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 1.7.5. Schedule Feasibility

Scheduling feasibility is the most important for project success. A project will fail if
not completed on time. So, our project is feasible in terms of time and well performed
according to our plan.

1.8. The significance and targeted beneficiary

This is project is significant for patients by providing them with the awareness of some diseases,
and make them to communicate with doctors. They may also give some feedback and make
appointment with the doctors. The patients do not need to go to the clinic to get some mentor, they
may save their time by making appointment online.
It helps the patients to prevent from harmful diseases, since they get some information about
diseases through this system and also for cure. In the other hand it is helpful for health care offices
in accomplishing their goals and, in serving the peoples effectively.
It also gives training and education for health care workers to develop their skills and to help the
patients with better knowledge. The targeted beneficiaries are the patients, the doctors and the
health care offices.

1.9. Methodology

1.9.1. Data collection Methodology

1.9.1.1. Questionnaires

Questionnaires are popular and fundamental tools for acquiring information on public knowledge
and perception of natural hazards. Questionnaires can provide valuable information to emergency
management agencies for developing risk management procedures. In order to access large
population, compared to others questionaries’ is preferable.

1.9.1.2. Related Works

We review different researches and related projects in order to get more information and address
the societies needs as well as the health care offices goal.
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 1.9.1.3. Interview

Interview should be useful to begin this unit with some basic definition of the selection interview.
Three are offered below:

• a face to face interaction between two or more individuals with a motive or a purpose
• a conversation with a purpose
• a procedure designed to predict future performance based on applicants' oral response to
oral enquiries

1.9.2. Data analysis methodology

We use object-oriented analysis (OOA) for data analyze. OOA has the following advantages:

• Encourages Encapsulation
• Easy to Understand and so on.

To design our software, we have chosen iterative software development life cycle.

1.9.3. Data implementation methodology

1.9.3.1. Hardware Requirement

We have used the following hardware tools to develop our projects

➢ Laptop
➢ Flash
➢ Pen
➢ CD/DVD
➢ Paper

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 1.9.3.2. Software Requirement

The below are the software’s that are capable to implement our projects
➢ Edraw Max 6.0: use to make for interface
➢ Microsoft office
➢ Windows 10: operating system.
➢ PHP script: to write the script.
➢ Java script: for validation
➢ Xampp server: to connect our data base.
➢ Front end: - cascading style sheet, hypertext markup language
➢ Back end: - Mysql
➢ Documentation: Adobe Photoshop: for editing various pictures and to prepare
logos
➢ Microsoft Visio 2013: to draw all the diagrams in UML in good format.

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 1.10. Schedule and Budget

1.10.1. Budget

Type List item Total cost

Quantity
Pen and pencil 2 10
Hard ware required Binder 2 20
Paper 1 dozen 120

Flash 8GB 190

CD and DVD 5 50
Computer 1 0
Software requirement Xampp 2 0
Operating system win 10 1 0
Microsoft office and power 2 0
point 2016
print 2birr/page ?
mysql server 1 0
Visio 2007 micro soft office 1 0

Total 390 birrs

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 1.10.2. Schedule

Schedule
No Task Description
Nov Dec Jan Feb Mar Apr may Jun

1 Proposal Select area of study and know the

system well.
2 Requirements Gathering information and define
Elicitation the project plan and system
(Software requirement.
Engineering)
3 Object Oriented Represent the internal structure&
Analysis functionality of data flow and user
interface.
4 Object Oriented Identify, analyze and compare
Design candidate solution.
5 Implementation The physical implementation for
specific technical solution of the
system
6 Testing It constructs the system according to
the system designer’s specification
7 Installation and The installation and delivery of the
Maintenance entire system into production

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References

□ Improving e-Health Services and System Requirements by Modelling the Health Environment by
Ahmed H. Alahmadi, Ben Soh, Azmat Ullah
□ Developing mHealth Apps with researchers: multi-stakeholder design considerations
Michael P. Craven1,3, Alexandra R. Lang2, Jennifer L. Martin3
□ A Proposal for the Use of Wireless Technology in Healthcare By Nadine Manjaro

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