2.4. Justification of the study
The laboratory play an important role for medical decision,
and clinician rely on it to provide better treatment to patient. The clinicians
therefore need to have a tool that will assist them to make laboratory test
order, to check if the result of the lab test ordered are available and if
neededto be notified by the laboratorywhen results are available. The
laboratory service should be able to record accurate data on disease diagnosed
and to produce efficient report for the disease surveillance. The patient also
as the most concerned person should have the possibility to know if his/her
laboratorytest results are available so he can schedule a meeting with the
clinician.
Since the use of mobile devices in healthcare has been proven
to facilitate coordination of patient care, care standardization, communication
between patient and health care providers.(Hao et al., 2015) Using this
technology in the proposed solution will allow patient and medical staff to
improve their communication experience with the health facility. Since internet
is still a challenge in a lot of African rural area to support a good quality
of service (QoS) for the use of web application, the system architecture will
be based on a client-server desktop application with alert notifications based
on SMS over GSM network instead of using internet API. The email notification
will be based on the use of internet but no component will be hosted on
internet.
In Ghana, the district hospital is one of the five functional
levels of health care distributionthat provide the first level of advance
clinical care, laboratory and diagnostic techniques. And we think that there is
need to provide this facility with heath information system that will allow to
manage their laboratory data with good coordination and exchange between
different services. Developing a Computerized Provider Order Entry system for a
district hospital will allow:
1. The Outpatient Department (OPD) to manage efficiently
patient information
2. The different clinical servicesto keep accurate
information on patient and their related laboratory test history
3. To provide better access to patient laboratory result test
by sharing the treatment guideline and the lab result between attending medical
practitioners (nurses, laboratory technician and physician)
4. To establish fast and timely notification of the laboratory
result by SMS and /or email to both patient and clinician.
5. To provide accurate information to the public health
department for disease surveillance
2.5. Objectives
2.5.1. General objectives
The main objective of the study is to developa Computerized
Provider Order Entry (CPOE)to capture, to track and exchange patient laboratory
order and related test result across the clinical services in a district
hospital.
2.5.2. Specific objectives
- To develop a Computerized Provider Order Entry (CPOE)
systemto capture information on the laboratory order and related test.
- To propose an adapted workflow that will facilitate the
exchange of patient laboratory information between the patient management
system, the clinical services and the CPOE.
- To establish anautomated and an efficient communication of
laboratory result between the patients, medical practitioners and the
laboratory technicians using mobile technology and internet.
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