CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1    BACKGROUND OF
STUDY

General Hospital  calabar. The
hospital provide qualitative Health care services but maintains that they do
not just heal mere physical illness which attacks the human body, but a much
deeper and holistic healing of the entire human person.  

These service areas include all the wards (medical and surgical for
male and female, pediatrics, chest unit and the maternity section as a
whole.  Other departments are out patient
department (OPD), laboratory department, pharmacy department, central sterling
and supply department (C.S.S.D), XRAY department community medicine and the
mobile clinic, and theatre department. 
The roles of these departments are complementary and depict what they
call team-work in patient management, the patient always beings at the center.

 The Hospital since its
establishment has demonstrated a very keen interest in the staff recruitment
and development of highly skilled and very dependable medical and paramedical
personnel.  Presently, their work force
stands at 460.

1.2 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEMS

Many problems are encountered with the manual method of handling
files.  It is quite unfortunate that ESUT
Teaching Hospital.  In spite of her large
medical service and recognition still keep her records manually. 

The problems associated with this manual system include time
wastage, ineffective use of statistical data, and duplication of efforts in
records keeping.  Delay in decision
making, it requires a lot of clerical efforts inability to cope up with daily
work load.  Slow in responding the
queries / enquires, Rodents records, lot of human mistakes, lack of
confidentiality of files and high cost of stationary.

 This project is aimed at
devising a system that will eradicate these above problems and improve medical
services to the citizens.  This
computerization process is believed to be capable of not only solving these
problems but many more to be encountered.

1.3         AIM/OBJECTIVES
OF THE PROJECT 

 The main purpose of this
project is to investigate and design a computer based medical services, capable
of eradicating the above mentioned problems to be speeding up the processing,
storing and retrieval of information which greatly assist medical personnel in
the performance of their duties.  Again,
it will provide a means to ease medical laboratory statistics and improve
decision making by reducing processing time, as well as reducing the
communication gap between the Doctors and other staff still involved in the
patient medical care.  It will also
reduce human errors to the barest minimum and improve confidentiality of
files.  In summary, the objective is to
set an efficient medical database for the advancement of the medical research
and analysis.

1.4     
JUSTIFICATION FOR THE PROJECT       

 The researcher during the
course of this investigation found out that all the medical keeping record are
done manually and having seen the problem associated with the manual system,
the researcher calls for a new system in patient related services.  The new system is justified in many ways.

 The design of the new system
will eliminate the problems of the system mentioned earlier by providing quick
file retrieval and searches.  By
providing accurate up to date information on demand.

 It will minimize redundantly
, loss of information will be prevented, the need for volume paper files and
unnecessary spending of paper folders, file cabinet will be removed and
adequate security will be provided to ensure database system.

 Furthermore, the new system
is justified when receptionist, medical record clerks in recording would not be
our worked again by the implemented of the automatic system.

1.5  OBJECTIVES OF
THE STUDY

The main objective
of this study is to develop a computerised management system. Others include;

i.                     
To provide total asset
visibility.

ii.                  
To allow high levels in giving
full patient history.

iii.                
To reduce lead time, shelf
space, and errors due to damage, fatigue of staff .

iv.                
To facilitate “just in time”
deliveries.

v.                   
To provide full process control
for the patient.

vi.                
To provide higher level
security as the system would be passworded to prevent unauthorised access.

vii.              
To shorten cross docking time
and speeds up sort/pick up rate.

viii.           
To help the management plan,
monitor, optimize resources and ascertain their financial position at any time.

1.6      SCOPE OF
THE STUDY

The scope of the project covers the development of a computer based
database application for use by the these sections (patient state of
health,bill payment and address ) at the general hospital to replace their old
paper notebook recording system. 

The requirements include designing a user interface for the
application and providing options for a user to log into the application by
supplying the correct username and password combination; register new patient
and view a list of already registered patient; to keep records of out patient
and in-patient in the hospital; view patient registered on the database;
admitted, discharge, bill patient etc. It also covers writing the background
programming to ensure that the interface works with the database through the
underlying codes to perform the required actions. It also involves the testing,
improvement and optimization of the application.

1.7 DEFINITION OF TERMS

MEDICAL RECORDS: It is the
records that spell out the patient’s illness and treatment during a particular
period for out patients and inpatients.

OUT PATIENTS:  Any person who goes to receive treatment in
the Hospital but does not stay overnight.

WARD: A section in the
hospital where inpatient stays and receives treatment on regular bases.

INPATIENTS:
A patient staying and receiving treatment in the
hospital.

1.8         PROJECT REPORT ORGANIZATION

This report is
organized into five chapters.  The first
chapter takes care of introduction: background, aims and objectives,
justification and scope of the project. Chapter two surveys the literature
review of this work.  In chapter three,
the project methodology, data collection, analysis, limitations of the existing
system, system design, system flowchart and top down design were done.  The input, processing and output modules are
critically analysed.

In chapter four,
system implementation, testing and integration: choice of development tools,
system requirements, and testing were carefully done.    Finally chapter five closes up with
summary, recommendations and conclusions: limitation, Bill of Engineering
Measurement and Engineering (BEME), bibliography, appendices