TITLE:
An Online Outpatient Database System: A Case Study of General Hospital, Minna
AUTHORS:
Opeyemi A. Abisoye, Blessing O. Abisoye, Blessing Ele Ojonuba
KEYWORDS:
Outpatient, Hospital, Medical, Records, Diagnosis, Database
JOURNAL NAME:
Intelligent Information Management,
Vol.8 No.4,
July
29,
2016
ABSTRACT: Outpatients receive medical treatment
without being admitted to a hospital. They are not hospitalized for 24 hours or
more but visit hospital, clinic or associated facility for diagnosis or
treatment [1]. But the problems of keeping their records for quick access by
the management and provision of confidential, secure medical report that
facilitates planning and decision making and hence improves medical service
delivery are vital issues. This paper explores the challenges of manual
outpatient records system for General Hospital, Minna and infers solutions to
the current challenges by designing an online outpatient’s database system. The
main method used for this research work is interview. Two (2) doctors, three
(3) nurses on duty and two (2) staff at the record room were interviewed. Fifty
(50) sampled outpatient records were collected. The combination of PHP, MYSQL
and MACROMIDIA DREAMVEAVER was used to design the webpage and input data. The
records were implemented on the designed outpatient management system and the
outputs were produced. The finding shows these challenges facing the manual
system of inventory management system. Distortion of patient’s folder and
difficulty in searching a patient’s folder, difficulty in relating previous
complaint with the new complains because of volume of the folder, slow access
to patient diagnosis history during emergency, lack of back up when an
information is lost, and preparation of accurate and prompt reports make it
become a difficult task as information is difficult to collect from various
register. Based on the findings, this paper highlights the possible solutions
to the above problems. An online outpatient database system was designed to
keep the outpatients records and improve medical service delivery.