DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF A MEDICAL DIAGNOSTIC SYSTEM

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.0 BACKGROUND OF STUDY

Medical diagnosis, often simply termed diagnosis refers both to the process of attempting to determine or identifying a possible disease or disorder to the opinion reached by this process. A diagnosis in the sense of diagnostic procedure can be regarded as an attempt at classifying an individuals health condition into separate and distinct categories that allow medical decisions about treatment and prognosis to be made. Subsequently, a diagnostic opinion is often described in terms of a disease or other conditions.

In the medical diagnostic system procedures, elucidation of the etiology of the disease or conditions of interest, that is, what caused the disease or condition and its origin is not entirely necessary. Such elucidation can be useful to optimize treatment, further specify the prognosis or prevent recurrence of the disease or condition in the future.

1.2 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

Disease diagnosis and treatment constitute the major work of physicians. Some of the time, diagnosis is wrongly done leading to error in drug prescription and further complications in the patients health. It has also been noticed that much time is spent in physical examination and interview of patients before treatment commences. The clinical decision support system CDSS shall address these problems by effectively providing quality diagnosis in realtime.

1.3 OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY

To develop modern interactive diagnostic software that will aid clinicians in diagnostic procedures.

To offer prescription of medication. To enable flexibility in access to information through the World Wide Web or comprehensive knowledge bases. To offer information on effective disease prevention. To provide for realtime overall effective, efficient and accurate service delivery by clinicians in line with global medical health standards.

1.4 SIGNIFICANCE OF STUDY

Advances in the areas of computer science and artificial intelligence have allowed for development of computer systems that support clinical diagnostic or therapeutic decisions based on individualized patient data. Clinical decision support CDS systems aim to codify and strategically manage biomedical knowledge to handle challenges in clinical practice using mathematical modeling tools, medical data processing techniques and artificial intelligence A.I. methods.