A Design of an Online Expert System for Clinic
Project Context
Expert System is one of the most common applications of artificial intelligence. It is a computer program that simulates the decision and actions of a person or an association that has specialist facts and experience in a particular field. Normally, such a system contains a knowledge base containing accumulated experience and a set of rules for applying the knowledge base to each particular situation. The major features of expert system are user interface, data representation, inference, explanations etc. Advantages of expert system are increased reliability, reduced errors, reduced cost, multiple expertise, intelligent database, reduced danger etc. Disadvantages of expert system are absence of common sense and no change with changing environment. Expert systems are software systems that can be compared to human experts. Their purpose is mostly advisory. Besides, they give explanation and advice to human experts when performing certain tasks. They are intelligent information systems, and are capable to explain and justify their conclusions. There are several types of problems that can be solved using knowledge-based systems. Durkin listed different application areas, including business, which encompasses marketing, management, finance, accounting, medical, etc. for doing control, design, diagnosis, instruction, interpretation, monitoring, planning, prediction, prescription, selection, detection, evaluation, computation, and classification. In addition to the expert systems that have applications in different areas of medicine, a variety of medical expert systems tools are available and can function as intelligent assistants to clinicians, helping in diagnostic processes, laboratory analysis, treatment protocol, and teaching of medical students and residents . Expert systems also have certain bad features such as they cannot examine a patient instead of physicians. Finally, expert system that is good for one certain field is often not good for another one. They may confuse a physician and make him/her commit wrong decisions practically under time stress. The primary goal of this research is to develop expert system applying recent medical errors classification and adverse events that are encountered in current medical practice to present some advice that might help to prevent those medical errors.(International Journal of Software Engineering & Applications (IJSEA), Vol.4, No.6, November 2013)
We the proponents proposed an expert system for clinics that designed to diagnose a patient illness. Most patients if they have mild illness, they usually go to clinics or health centers. The problem was if there is no physician available at that time who can diagnose the patient. So we proposed a system that can diagnose any illnesses. It can track the patient’s information. It may be used as a reminder system that alerts and informs the physician of the changes in a person’s condition, perhaps by attaching an expert system to a monitor.
This system will help small barangays and town clinics to admit patients even though there is no physician available. This system will render services such as automatic prediction of the patient illness (e.g. skin allergy, cough, fever, etc.) the laboratory test that the patient should undergo and even the treatment that should be done prior of the patient’s diagnosed illness. This system will also be the one responsible for sending text messages (SMS) to the patient and give them advice when to come back to the clinic if the physician is available.
Objectives of the Study
The development of an IT infrastructure has enormous potential to improve safety, quality of health care system. Computer assisted diagnosis and care management programs can help clinical decision making, adherence to the best evidence based guidelines, often needed in patients with several illnesses.
Our goal is to enable that patient’s information and data become available to all healthcare clinics involved in the medical care of patients and to be:
- Analyze the concept of databases and its function to apply it in the design of an expert system for clinics.
- Design an expert system using the concept of knowledge management.
- Speed up access to appointments booked, patient’s data, sources of knowledge diagnostic support and diagnostic procedures ordered
- Able to use as a reminder system that alerts and inform the physician in the patient’s condition.
Significance of the Study
The study provides the researcher and the participants the knowledge about how the expert system will help small clinics (mostly barangay, and town clinics) to admit patients even though there were no physicians available. This will be significant to the following:
For the patients, this study will alleviate spending so much time waiting for a physician.
For the students, this study will assessing their achievement and performance in learning. It will help them to understand better which lead to self-discovery and self fulfilment.
For the faculty members, this study will highlight the importance of their support to the students by sharing their knowledge, experience, and tips on how to be prepared and do preparations before engaging in such agenda which can lead to a better teacher and student’s relationship.
For the future researchers, this study may serve as a guide for other researcher’s to further enhance their ability in conducting an information technology study. It may encourage them to respond to the continuously growing needs of the information technology industry, education, and society in general.
Scope and Delimitations
This study has several important strengths. Firstly, our literature search was through, and we screened articles to identify potentially relevant studies. Secondly, we generated the candidate set of potentially important system features by systematically reviewing the literature for relevant expert opinion, rather than by relying on the views of a limited set of experts. Thirdly, we used two independent reviewers for study selection and data abstraction to increase the reliability of our findings. Fourthly, this study provides a quantitative estimate of the relative importance of specific clinical decision support system features. Finally, this study provides a comprehensive summary of randomized controlled trials that have evaluated the importance of specific system features through direct experimentation
Research Process
The System Development Life Cycle (SDLC), a software engineering technique, was observed in this study. Steps and procedures were followed to make certain that the proponents can give a better end-product vital for the effective use of this Online Expert System for Clinics.
System Development Life Cycle in systems engineering and software engineering is the process of creating or altering systems, and the models and methodologies that people use to develop these systems. In software engineering, an SDLC concept underpins many kinds of software development methodologies. These methodologies form of the framework for planning and controlling the creation of an information system: the software development process.
System Development Life Cycle is the oldest formalized methodology for building information system and is intended to develop information system in very deliberate, structured and methodical way, reiterating each stages of the life cycle. The traditional system development life cycle originated in the 1960s to develop large scale functional business systems activities revolve around heavy data processing and number routines. (Shelly, et. ai 2013)
Planning Phase
The planning phase is the first phase in SDLC adopted by the researchers. During this phase, the researchers decided on what project should be taken. Careful planning in the early stage of a project was necessary to coordinate activities and mange project risks effectively.
In this phase, the researchers will come up with the idea of making an expert system that can diagnose the patient even if there is no physician available at that time. Planning the proposed system is a big challenge for the researchers so they conducted an interview with the domain experts. Primary sources of knowledge were acquired from human experts in the domain area at the rural areas and barangay’s. These experts were selected due to their expertise and experience in the Clinic.
During the extensive discussion, the researcher acquired the relevant knowledge which was significant to generate the rules. In addition, the domain experts were actively participated throughout the research work and they were consulted to confirm the correctness of the acquired knowledge.
Analysis Phase
Next to planning is analyzing. In this phase, the researchers define the requirements of the system, independent of how these requirements will be accomplished. This phase defines the problem that the researchers are trying to solve. The deliverable result at the end of this phase is a requirement document. Ideally, this document states in a clear and precise fashion what is to be built. This analysis represents the “what” phase. The requirement document tries to capture the requirements from the researchers’ perspective by defining goals and interactions at a level removed from the implementation details.
Design Phase
Next to analyzing is the design of the system. It involves the design of software. Design focused on high level design like, what programs are needed and how they will interact, low-level design, web-design, and data design. In the design phase the researchers incorporated conceptual modelin
In this context diagram, the system gathered all the data from the patient wherein the secretary will input all the information of the patient. After collecting all the data, the system will render services such as automatic prediction of the patient illness, medication. The doctor takes the medical record of the patient and can add suggestion to the patient through SMS.
Testing Phase
This phase is one of the most important parts in software’s lifecycle. Once the project is already done, it underwent several tests. For it to be effective, the information must all be reliable and the methods and operations must function accurately as expected. This phase involves bringing all the project pieces together into a special testing environment to test for errors and interoperability, in order to verify that the system meets all the process requirements defined in the analysis phase. The testing phase shows how it will manage the biometric system on its processing state. At the end of this phase, the system is ready for the deployment process.
Implementation Phase
This is the phase where the system is written and documented; this is also the actual testing of the developed system. This is the phase wherein the administrator and the user will be introduced and trained using the newly-developed software.
In this phase, the researchers documented and constructed the system. This is the phase where the researchers implement the proposed system that is ready to use by the users.
Maintenance Phase
Maintenance adapts to changes in the environment as well as updates the system significantly. This is the phase where the researchers can correct the defects of the system and in this phase the researchers can make changes to the Online Expert Systems for Clinics.
