Design and Implementation of Medical Diagnosis of Expert System
Chapter One
OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY
This work-study will as much as possible try to achieve the objectives stated below.
- To help in the fight against malaria mostly in Africa and in the world at large.
- To appraise the contributions of an expert system in medicine.
- To inform the medical practitioner that they can enjoy a prolific alliance with computer systems.
- A Flexible and relatively easily maintained system.
- An improvement to quality by providing a consistent source of reliable expert guidance.
- It reduces the amount of wastage in terms of time and human resource
- The containment of medical diagnosis by substituting software systems for skilled people, to help in assistance.
CHAPTER TWO
LITERATURE REVIEW
Man’s interest in Medical Decision support and in establishing guide lines for physical researches date back to the New Babylonian Era (650Bc), cunciform writings. Data from this period were found giving advice on physical examinations, diagnosis and prognosis of diseases.
In recent times, people have recognized that computers can support physicians in the diagnosis and therapeutic process. In the late 1950’s, an article “Reasoning foundations of medical diagnosis’ and various others were published dealing with this properly.
This was followed by the first generation of system that attempt to assist the physician in decision making, but most early systems remains remained only prototypes.
At the beginning of the 1979’s, the researchers were drawn to the field of artificial intelligence (Al) making it possible to develop expert systems dealing with uncertain and incomplete medical knowledge. The most famous examples of early expert are as follows;
DEDOMBAL’S LEED ABDOMINAL SYSTEM: An expert s’ for acute abdominal pain, developed by F.T. DeDombal at the University of Leeds. (Ref.) Ralston, David W. “Principles of Artificial Intelligence and expert development”.
HELP SYSTEM, A HOSPITAL BASED SYSTEM: Developed at LDS hospital in Salt Lake City. (Ref) Rolston, David W. “Principles of ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND EXPERT DEVELOPMENT MYCIN:An expert system for diagnosing and recommending treatment of bacterial infection of the blood. Developed by short life and associated at Stanford University (Ref.) Reynolds George W., 1988, west “information systems for managers” pgs 182-187.
In recent years, there has been an enormous development in medical expert systems and systems now available are mature enough for targeted adoption in practice. In order to deliver health care even more effectively, expert systems will be increasingly integrated in Hospital Information System (NHIS).
BRIEF HISTORY OF UNIVERSITY OF BENIN TEACHING HOSPITAL
The University of Benin Teaching Hospital (UBTH) was established as Midwest Medical Centre following an Advisory Committee report headed by Prof. H. Oritsejolomi Thomas and inaugurated by the then Military Governor of Midwestern Region, Col. S.O. Ogbemudia through Edict No. 12 of 1971. The Edict which provided for a Board of Management for the teaching hospital with specific powers and duties also appointed Dr. Irene E.B. Ighodaro as first Chairman of the Board. The Midwest Medical Centre was renamed University of Benin Teaching Hospital by His Excellency, the Military Governor of Midwestern State in April 1973, hence the establishment of the University of Benin Teaching Hospital.
CHAPTER THREE
SYSTEM ANALYSIS AND DESIGN
ANALYSIS OF THE SYSTEM
In medicine one of the key difficulties experienced by physicians in diagnosing is the complication that arises when more than one disease have very close and similar symptoms with another.
Most physicians adhere to the methodology of the first having general assumption about a suspected disease and then gradually build on that assumptions removing or adding facts that will help in diagnosing a disease accurately. Therefore to obtain an optimal diagnosis of malaria disease it is required of a medical doctor to have large information reservoir and a special ability to draw inferences correctly with the information he has acquired.
CHAPTER FOUR
SYSTEM IMPLEMENTATION AND MAINTENANCE
SYSTEM IMPLEMENTATION
This stage involves the following up the details set out in the system specification. Having completed the design of the system, the implementation starts with the acquisition of the right and appropriate hardware and software requirement as outlined in the previous section. The system was fully documented to acquire the true knowledge of design that involves the co-ordination of the efforts of the user operations.
CHAPTER FIVE
SUMMARY, CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION
SUMMARY
Having studied the project topic critically, it can be summarized that the implementation of an expert system on malaria diagnostic is an easy and convenient way of determining and diagnosing the various forms of malaria fever which is a wide spread disease in Africa.
CONCLUSION
The implementation of an expert system on malaria diagnosis system is aimed at achieving efficiency and proficiency. The application program was tested and found to be efficient. The program was written in VISUAL BASIC 6.0 language which can easily be understood by the users.
The advancement in computer technology has no doubt helped and will continue to help man in his decision making process; thus facilitating efficiency in all aspect of human endeavors.
RECOMMENDATION
In the light of our finding in the course of this project, it may be pertinent to make the following recommendation:
- The computerization effort should gradually be extended to cover all other forms of diseases.
- The computerization effort should also gradually be extended to cover all operations and other forms of diagnosis in the hospital as indicated in this study
- Having regard to resource constraint, the hospital should acquire a mini computer with large memory to cater for the number of patients that was diagnosed.
- As the resources of the hospital improves, more terminals ought to be acquired for use in the various domains of the hospital such as the pharmaceutical section, nursing section etc; This is after the Local Area Network (LAN) has been putting into place.
- This hardware should be located close to the front desk or office to allow easy and early interaction between the hospital staff and the computer operators.
- Having regard to resource constraint, the hospital should acquire a mini computer with large memory because this could help in LAN connection.
- More research work should be carried out on diagnostic, treating all forms of diseases.
LIMITATION OF THE STUDY
There was an alarming unavailability of appropriate literacy material, which is; books, journals, magazine etc. and this made gathering of facts and data very difficult.
Most of the available materials were not recent publications and this is not ideal in a field as dynamic as computer science where relevant facts go out of date relatively quick are replaced by news ones.
It also took a long time and large commitment of resources to build interesting expert system. This is because help is frequently from knowledge engineers (experts in a field) that are rare and expensive and this makes expert support construction rather costly.
Also, bearing mind that this research work is carried out along with academic studies and as such the time is quite short for the research work.
REFRENCES
- Akilo B. E. (2011): “Introduction to artificial intelligence” Department of computer science Shaka Polytechnic, Benin City.
- Dall, C. J (1981): An introduction to Date Base System Addison, Second edition. Canada: Wesley Publication
- French C.S (1992): System Specification in Computer Science, Third Edition. DP Publication Ltd Lg 531-586
- Martin, E.W (1979): Electronic Data Processing, Third edition
- Mbam, B.C.E.(1997): Element Of Basic Programming, Revised Edition Windster: Oliver, EC & Chapman Data Processing D.P