World Journal of Engineering Research and Technology

Chinecherem Umezuruike*, Prof. Samuel O. Okolie, Dr. Adewale O. Adebayo, Dr. Wilson Nwankwo and Dr. Joshua V. Jonah

ABSTRACT

Management, exchange and control of clinical information flow, and decision support have remained a challenge in most secondary/tertiary healthcare institutions in Nigeria amidst the continued advancement in Information Technology. Many of those in need of healthcare are often attracted to Military health facilities owing to the public perception that such establishments have better facilities, dedicated personnel, and affordable cost. The common scenario is a high traffic of healthcare seekers thronging such facilities and invariably leading to poor care as available facilities are overstretched. This paper is an integral part of a series of investigations on how the large data generated during clinical care in public military health institutions in Nigeria could be used to aid effective planning and decision-support in health delivery. The study adopted a mix of design science and object-oriented methods to problem identification and analysis. First, a systematic study conducted revealed lack of integration of meaningful Information technologies into the practices and operations of most military hospitals as all information exchange is largely done manually. The study also revealed that the health facilities remain technologically disconnected to the outside world as there is no public information exchange interface as to clinical management and appointments such as portals, etc. To address this problem, we proposed a simple realistic and cost-effective model that integrates a decision support system to provide a reliable intelligence as regards the planning and management of patients.

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