A health decision support system for rural india

Abstract

In India and other developing nations, the bulk of the morbidity & mortality is due to commonly occurring communicable diseases & parasitic diseases coupled with malnutrition especially in rural areas. The effective decision making at the top level of any health services mostly depends on the availability of various resources such as human expertise, equipments, and medicine. People die from infectious and/or chronic diseases are the leading causes of death, especially in rural areas. By analyzing mortality, morbidity, and behavioral data, one can attempt to quantify health problems and the behavioral risk factors that contribute to them Hence in a country like India an effective multi disease surveillance system is essential for the General Health Care System to detect an outbreak, monitor the trend, prevent an epidemic & decrease the morbidity & mortality rate of India The proposed DSS is targeting to assist the top management of the State health service which will provide a practical, relatively inexpensive and replicable model of disease surveillance. The proposed system consists of application and management software that support clinical and operational data. The software is designed for multi-site use in individual medical facilities and health workers in remote villages. The disease surveillance data is collected and updated periodically by the health workers to the central database through SMS. This disease surveillance system through SMS will provide real time data and extract the statistical and customized information and even facilitate the prediction of the outbreak of epidemics and report emergencies. It also provides an automatic response messaging through SMS to people regarding basic preventive measures and cures. A smart phone application is built using J2ME which make data transmission error free and secured. The use of SMS as the mode of data transmission will help reduce bureaucratic delays and will automate the task of disease surveillance by providing an inexpensive replacement to the existing trend.