ARBA MINCH UNIVERSITY

ARBA MINCH INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

FACULTY OF COMPUTING AND SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
Industrial Project On:

Android Based Maternal Health Advisory System for Arba Minch General Hospital

Submitted by:

Name ID No

NIFTALEM ALEMU Eamit/122/11

BEREK BEKELE Eamit/090/11

ENGIDA TADELE Eamit/097/11

Advisor: Mr. GASHAW (M.SC)

A senior project(proposal)

Submitted to Department of Information Technology, Faculty of Computing and Software

Engineering, AMIT, Arba Minch University, in Partial fulfillment for the requirement of the
Degree of Bachelor Science in Information Technology.

Arba Minch, Ethiopia

January, 2023
 Approval sheet
This project has been submitted for examination with our approval as the project advisor.
Advisor Name …………………...................... Signature………………………….
This project has been examined with our approval as the project examiner.
Examiners: Name Signature:

1…………………………………. …………………………….

2…………………………………. ……………………………..

3…………………………………... ……………………………….
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Table Content
Approval sheet ................................................................................................................................ 2
Table Content................................................................................................................................... I
List of Tables ................................................................................................................................ III
Abstract ......................................................................................................................................... IV
Chapter One .................................................................................................................................... 5
1 Introduction ................................................................................................................................. 5
1.1 Background of the project .................................................................................................... 5
1.2 Background of Organization ................................................................................................. 6
1.2.1 Vision ............................................................................................................................. 6
1.2.2 Mission .......................................................................................................................... 6
1.3 Team composition ................................................................................................................ 7
1.4 Task and Schedule of the Project.......................................................................................... 8
1.5 Statement of the problem ...................................................................................................... 9
1.6 Objective of project ............................................................................................................ 10
1.6.1 General objectives ....................................................................................................... 10
1.6.2 Specific Objectives ...................................................................................................... 10
1.7 Scope of project .................................................................................................................. 10
1.8 Limitations of the project.................................................................................................... 11
1.9 Significance of the project .................................................................................................. 11
1.10 Target beneficiaries of the system .................................................................................... 12
1.11 Feasibility of project ......................................................................................................... 12
1.11.1 Economic feasibility .................................................................................................. 12
1.11.2 Time feasibility .......................................................................................................... 14
1.11.3 Operational feasibility ............................................................................................... 14
1.11.4 Technical feasibility................................................................................................... 14
1.11.5 Political Feasibility .................................................................................................... 14
1.12 Methodology for the Project ............................................................................................. 14
1.12.1 Data source ................................................................................................................ 14
1.12.2 Fact finding techniques .............................................................................................. 15

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1.12.3 Development Tools .................................................................................................... 15

1.12.4 System Analysis and Design Technique.................................................................... 17
1.12.5 Testing Procedures..................................................................................................... 18
1.12.6 Implementation .......................................................................................................... 18

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List of Tables
Table 1 Team composition ............................................................................................................. 3
Table 2 Task and schedule of project .............................................................................................. 4
Table 3 Hardware costs ................................................................................................................... 9
Table 4 Software costs .................................................................................................................... 9
Table 5 Software tool .................................................................................................................... 13
Table 6 Hardware Tools ................................................................................................................ 14

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Abstract

Among the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) of Ethiopia, one is to “ensure healthy lives and
promote well-being for all at all ages”. SDG 3 aims to ensure that people have access to health
facilities and reduce the maternal mortality ratio. Globally, greater than 150 million women
become pregnant in developing countries like Ethiopia and an estimated five hundred thousand die
from them because of pregnancy-related issues. Its further results in 7 million stillbirths or infant
deaths within the first week of life. one of the main reasons for this increased maternal mortality
rate may be most pregnant women in the developing world receive insufficient or no prenatal and
postnatal care, lack of access to modern healthcare services, deliver without help from
appropriately trained health care providers, and ineffective nutritional status before and during
pregnancy, Lack of knowledge on danger signs and benefits of maternal health services;
communication hassles etc. To tackle such a problem, ICT (specifically mobile technologies), a
well-structured strong health system, and a healthcare workforce play a profound impact.
However, still the date, there is no mobile health app or service that assists maternal and newborn
healthcare in the Ethiopian context. The ultimate goal of this project is to design and implement
sustainable, state-of-art Android based health applications to support maternal health and newborn
healthcare. The proposed maternal and newborn health management system is an android-based
application that can run on smartphones. The proposed Android based health app has the following
key tangible usages; namely, i) digitize the records and improve communication, ii) enhance
knowledge sharing and real-time information exchange, iii) reduce the maternal and newborn
mortality rate, iv) enhance data collection/reporting via EHR, v) support decision making and, vi)
reduced health cost. This project makes significant contributions to the process of mitigating
maternal health-related problems, assisting healthcare professionals through providing well-
designed maternal health follow-up apps/mechanisms, it further helps to achieve SDG 3 of the
Ethiopian government, and more.

Keywords: Maternal health, Health apps, Mobile technology, Maternal & newborn mortality

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Chapter One

1 Introduction

1.1 Background of the project

Maternal health refers to the health of women during pregnancy/prenatal, childbirth, and the
postnatal period (revolvy, 2018). The socio-economic development status of the country has the
greatest impact on pregnant women and newborn health care delivery. As a matter of fact, globally,
greater than 150 million women become pregnant in developing countries like Ethiopia and an
estimated five hundred thousand die from them because of pregnancy related issues. Further
results in 7 million stillbirths or infant deaths within the first week of life. The top critical reasons
for these challenges are that pregnant women are not getting dedicated prenatal and postnatal
medical support, lack of access to modern technology-assisted healthcare services, socio-
economic factors, lack of coordinated communication and knowledge-sharing platforms, poor
management & manual working practices, and the knowledge gaps.

We all well-know that, yesterday/last month’s/year technology had become the number one
solution paradigm/instrument to solve different classes of problems that are existing in the various
sectors namely; in education, even in health, manufacturing industry, in agriculture, etc. To
overcome the above challenges, we came up with a new idea and solution paradigm through using
mobile technology as our instrument or hammer. The main aim of this study is to design and
develop context-aware Android based health apps that support efficient and effective healthcare
service delivery for the pregnant and newborns to end all preventable maternal mortality. Firstly,
this study pinpoints some of the critical factors that are highly influencing pregnant women and
newborn health services delivery in depth, because the use of maternal health services is
instrumental for preventing maternal mortality and morbidity. After making assessment, design
and implement Android-based health apps that directly cope up with the problems identified. The
proposed system will have multiple modules and packages: -including pregnant women
registration, knowledge sharing module, appointment management, follow-up and notification
(regarding prenatal check-ups, possible danger signs, child vaccination) and other crucial
pregnancy related information modules exists.

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1.2 Background of Organization

Arba Minch General Hospital is a public hospital located in Arba Minch town, Ethiopia. It is one
of the general hospitals in SNNPR region of Gamo Zone. It has a bed capacity for 200 patients.

Arba Minch General Hospital is the only hospital serving a population of 200,747 people per year
in Gamo and other nearby zones. According to an Ethiopian health system model, a general
hospital should serve 1-1.5 million population with an average of 234 staffs. Even though it is
named as a general hospital it is functioning as a referral hospital with the number of staffs and
several services it is providing (Demissie, Mengistu 2007).

Some of the researches that have been done in Arba Minch Hospital targeting children include
assessment of neonatal and child mortality and pregnancy. Studies that aim to assess pregnancy
related conditions and diseases were among maternal health-related researches.

1.2.1 Vision

Inspire seeing Arba Minch general hospital is the center of excellence in the country in quality
health care service delivery, reduced critical shortage of high-level health professionals, and
having a healthy, productive, and prosperous community.

1.2.2 Mission

To reduce morbidity, mortality, disability, and improve the health status of the people through the
provision of quality curative, rehabilitative, promotive, and preventive health services.

To train competent high-level health professionals and to generate important evidence by

conducting problem-solving researches.

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1.3 Team composition

Table 1 Team composition

Prepared No. Name ID. No. Email/Mobile Responsibility

By 1 Niftalem Alemu Eamit/122/ +251947680769 Participate in all tasks

11
2 Bereket Bekele Eamit/090/ Participate in all tasks
11

3 Engida Tadele Eamit/097/ Participate in all tasks

11

Date January 2023

Advisor Mr. GASHAW A. (M.SC) +251-913525880

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1.4 Task and Schedule of the Project

In order to accomplish time effectively and efficiently, we used the Gant charts to
schedule time in all phases of project we do. It’s important for group teams in case of
managing time for the establishment of this project and managing time, so we will
complete this project as scheduled below

Activity Time (2023)

Decembe

jenuary1
r15-

Project

Proposal

Requirement
Analysis

System Design

Implementation &

coding

Testing

Project defense

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1.5 Statement of the problem

Nowadays Ethiopian healthcare communities are strongly struggling to deliver efficient and
effective maternal healthcare services to its society in order to reduce the morbidity and mortality
rates of both women and newborns. However, as we know that Ethiopia is one of developing
countries and the provision of quality maternal health services are hindered by different factors.
Some of the top prominent influencers of the maternal health services are: -

❖ socio -economic factors especially in rural area,

❖ lack of real time maternal information exchange and communication platforms,

❖ lack of the modern health system,

❖ professionals have no mechanism/system to closely follow-up pregnant women’s,

❖ knowledge gaps of the health workers and pregnant women,

❖ increased cost of the maternal health services,

❖ availability less trained man power,

❖ Manual paper-based and poor maternal health information management, this further result
in different complications such as loose of critical pregnant women health information,
illegible handwriting, incomplete data recording, missing of appointment due to no
notification mechanism etc. When we sum up those all challenges it may result in the loss
of precious women and newborn life.

More than 150 million women become pregnant in developing countries each year and an
estimated 500,000 of them die from pregnancy-related causes. Maternal health problems are also
the causes for more than seven million pregnancies to result in stillbirths or infant deaths within
the first week of life. Maternal death, of a woman in reproductive age, has a further impact by
causing grave economic and social hardship for her family and community. Other than their health
problems most women in the developing countries lack access to modern health care services and
increase the magnitude of death from preventable problems.

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Due to the above factor: -

❖ Most pregnant women do not receive antenatal care.

❖ Maternal mortality and unnecessary pregnancy increased.

❖ Time and cost wastage to get health centers

❖ Women often lack access to relevant information, trained providers and supplies, and other
essential services.

1.6 Objective of project

1.6.1 General objectives

The ultimate goal of this project is to design and develop Android based maternal health advisory
system for delivering quality maternal health services to end deaths of mothers and newborn.

1.6.2 Specific Objectives

❖ To identify the factors that highly influence maternal health service delivery

❖ To identify the functional and non-functional requirements of the system in detail

❖ To design Android-based shared maternal health advisory system model

❖ To promote Family Planning, & self-care by sharing knowledge via mobile technologies

❖ To create well-coordinated communication platform between health workers and pregnant

women

❖ Develop the system by using implementation technologies

❖ Test the system functionality and user acceptance

1.7 Scope of project

This project will help mothers and health care professionals by providing required information.as
bellow

❖ Mother get detail advice and recommendation from physicians using chat.

❖ Mother can know about disease symptom, causes, prevention method and solution.

❖ Mother can see her health status or health record

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❖ Physician can inform mother about their appointment.

❖ Physician can share knowledge for mother on prenatal and postnatal

❖ Physician can manage health record of mother

❖ Family plan worker can register new mother on the system

❖ To find out the way mother can care themselves at home by providing them baby care
advice and pregnancy period exercise.

❖ To communicate mother with physicians from distance without physical contact.

❖ To inform pregnant mother about their appointment with physician.

1.8 Limitations of the project

❖ The system will not work properly unless network connection is available at the time

❖ The system will not work properly unless the user device has enough balance to access
internet.

❖ The physician will not prescribe a medicine to mothers but they will make them aware
about their problem and make them to visit close health station.

❖ Shortage of time.

1.9 Significance of the project

The purpose of this project is listed below:

❖ Help women care themselves by providing them necessary information.

❖ Help Family Planning workers get necessary information over their mobile where ever the
internet connection is available.

❖ Help women to talk/contact physicians from distance without physical contact.

❖ To remind them take their drug carefully in time.

❖ To reduce the cost of the health ministry which it costs to train more health care
professionals.

❖ To enable women chat with health centers physician with this application.

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1.10 Target beneficiaries of the system

Different parts are going to be benefited from the new system such as:

Mother: - Helps mother to get advice from physician without going long distance and mother can
inform easily the mater that happened to her immediately as well as mother get necessary
information from the system at home.

Family plan worker: - Helps Family plan worker to registering new mother on the system without
error of data entry and give some advice for through the system.

Physician: - Helps Physician to share its knowledge at once time for many mothers by uploading
information on the system and can set appointment for mother by using this system.

Organization: -There is many crowds in most of hospitals and this is uncomfortable specially for
pregnant women. But our system reduces this crowdedness and helps the hospitals to manage and
work efficiently without distraction.

Ethiopian government: - Helps to reduce the death occurs due to maternal issue. When death of
women’s reduced the productivity increased because these women’s plays an important role in the
development of country.

Health ministry: - This system helps ministry of health to achieve its goal by reducing maternal
death and unborn child death. They get managed record easily from the system.

1.11 Feasibility of project

Since Android based maternal health advisory system is very useful for the mothers in that it
provides different information in their health.

1.11.1 Economic feasibility

The development materials are freely available the only thing the user requires is that mobile phone
and an emulator can be used representing the mobile phone too. As all the resources are freely
available, it gives an indication of the system is economically possible for development.

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Table 3 Hardware costs

No Materials used Amount Price per Birr Total cost
1 HP Computer 1 20,000 20,000
2 Pen 5 15 75
3 Document print 1 100 100
4 Flash Disk 1(4 GB) 300 300

Total 20,725

Table 4 Software costs

No Materials used Price per Birr

1 Microsoft Word 2021 Free

2 Visual Studio Free

3 E-draw Free

4 MySQL Free

6 Mozilla Firefox Free

7 Chrome Free

8 Android studio Free

Total 0

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1.11.2 Time feasibility

This project is expected to be completed in two semesters 2015 academic year. Some parts of the
project component to be completed in the first semester are up to design and the rest of activities
such as implementation, testing and maintenance would complete in the second semester including
other minor activities.

1.11.3 Operational feasibility

The user should not misuse the system. To determine the operational feasibility of the system we
should take into consideration the knowledge level of the users. Initially this system is proposed
to be designed to who use mobile phone. The application is expected to be very flexible for its
users. And this is also one of the factors that make it operationally feasible

1.11.4 Technical feasibility

The system is going to be developed by using technological system development techniques such
Firebase database without any problems and the group members have enough capability to develop
the project and also, we are going to develop mobile application by using android studio software
to make our system technically feasible, we follow many tutorials from YouTube in case of
overcome the problem on android studio. When we evaluate the hardware’s and software’s
requirements and how they meet the need of the proposed system, the proposed system is
technically feasible because we are using currently available and affordable technologies to
develop the proposed system.

1.11.5 Political Feasibility

The project team members will build the system without violating the rules and regulations of the
governments as well as the organization. The system being built is for the sake of the productivity
of the organization and customers so that the project is legally feasible.

1.12 Methodology for the Project

1.12.1 Data source

To do this project, the project team uses data collection methodology to gather the necessary
information that is needed to develop the project. The methodology used for information gathering
is primary & secondary sources.

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The methods we employed in the data collection are observation, interviews, document of analysis
and internet that are references or indirectly related with maternal hearth surveillance system.

1.12.2 Fact finding techniques

Observation: - We have observed the existing system. We observe Arba Minch general hospital
how they assist maternal health.

Interview: -we used interview to get information about existing system for developing our project.
We have conducted the interview with health care professionals.

Document analysis: -we use this method to get addition information from different research
applied on maternal health by using internet. We are going to model the requirements that we
gather using object-oriented approach because object-oriented technology is of broad means used
to handle highly structured applications. Object oriented technology provides numerous
advantages in applications by making them easy to use and maintain.

1.12.3 Development Tools

We will use different software, hardware tools and programming language.

Software Tools

❖ Microsoft Office Word: -We use Microsoft office word to type our project work.

❖ Power Point: -We use it to present our presentation in short and brief way.

❖ MySQL: - we use it for database connection.

❖ Android studio: - we use it to build the application.

❖ Visual paradigm: - we use this software to draw UML diagrams.

❖ Snipping tool: - we use snipping tool to capture picture from Windows 10 Pro

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Table 5 Software tool

Categorization Software Specification Purposes

Front End Android Studio Build the application

Back end Firebase Build the database

Development Sublime Text Editing source codes

Tools
Visual paradigm Drawing and design different tools.

Microsoft office Editing documents and preparing

PowerPoint

Power Point Presenting our presentation in short and brief way

Operating System Window Operating Running and executing the program

System

Hardware Tools
❖ Computer: - We use it to type on it and to install all software and programming language
we require developing the system. All tasks are done on computer.

❖ Network Cable: - used to get the internet access by connecting internet line from internet
hub to computer for further read and search information from internet.

❖ Flash Disk: - used to keep back up of our files

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Table 6 Hardware Tools

Processor Intel(R)core (TM)i5-4300Mcpu@2.60GHz

Flash Disk At minimum 8GB

RAM To the maximum of 8.00GB

Hard Disk To the maximum of 5000 Gb

1.12.4 System Analysis and Design Technique

In generally, we will use Object-Oriented System Analysis and Design (OOSAD) approach
throughout the project. We will use OOSAD approach because of the following important features:

❖ Increased reusability

❖ Increased extensibility

❖ Improved quality

❖ Financial benefits

❖ Reduced maintenance cost

The model that we will use in our system development life cycle is the Iterative model. Because
we aimed to do the project with it. Whenever we want to add or expand the scope we can expand
as well if we cannot implement all the proposed scope by different reasons like shortage of time,
we can minimize the scope.

The project team chooses this iterative data model because:

❖ Building and improving the project is step by step.

❖ Can get the reliable user feedback.
❖ Less time is spent on documenting and more time is given for designing.
❖ Can only create a high-level design of the application before we actually begin to build.

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1.12.5 Testing Procedures

We will perform different testing for checking the functionality of our proposed system.

Unit testing: - First we will test each unit at each system. So, if a problem is encountered it will
immediately maintain at which the problem occurs.

Integration testing: - After we test each unit of the proposed system, we will perform an
integration test to check whether the system meets all the functional requirements. When several
components are complete, they will test to ensure that they integrate well with each other, the
operating system, and other components.

System testing: -After all of the above testing is checked we will test our system with other people
and we will conduct some comments on how they get our system.

1.12.6 Implementation

The present traditional maternal health advisory system is still working. we choose to develop the
newly proposed system parallel to the existing system. We are going to change the system after
this proposed system is finished until the customers use the manual system.

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