A Model-Driven Optical Clinic Management Systems: Systematic Software Engineering Approach

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: eHealth systems in a modern hospital and clinic require stringent measures to coordinate the operations of doctors, nurses, pharmacies for improved health care delivery.

OBJECTIVES: The primary objective is to perform a comparative analysis to devise a novel approach to address the needs of a hospital information management system. This has triggered an urgent response to develop Optical Clinic Management System (OCMS) to address the limitation of the existing system. This intervention would promote the good health and well-being of humankind to meet the Sustainable Development Goals 3 (SDGs 3).

METHODS: The study proposed a Design Science Research Methodology (DSRM) approach in Software Engineering as a catalyst to design OCMS to capture patients’ up-to-date records for medical diagnosis. The system is to assist Clinicians to prescribe medications based on a patient’s medical history by clicking a computer button.

RESULTS: The limitations discovered during systems analysis and design of the existing systems were addressed during system evaluation and testing. It was observed that the proposed optical clinic management systems received a 98% acceptance for the implementation.

CONCLUSION: This study explores the problem facing clinic and hospital administration and established major factors affecting the existing systems. It was discovered that the paper-based management systems used to keep patients’ medical records were found to be unreliable and therefore unsafe to be used as the basis to prescribe medication for patients, hence the need for this comprehensive system to address the problem for effective health care delivery. The situation in the existing system incidentally led to misplaced and unstructured handling of patient clinical records that may inadvertently make the clinicians administer medications with no reference to the patient’s previous diagnosis due to the lost file. Hence, the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic and its global destruction of human lives should motivate African leaders to invest adequate resources in the development of information technology applications for robust health information systems to improve health care delivery in Africa.