CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
- INTRODUCTION
Nothing optimizes modern life better than the computer for better or worse, computer has infiltrated every aspect of our society today, computer are capable of handling many of the repetitive task that are time consuming is what motivated the computer scientist to think on the idea of designing and developing an expert system in a specific field or discipline to solve problems or sometimes as a knowledge based system.
Expert systems attempt to supply both knowledge and reasoning of human being. They are experts in only one field, topic and discipline, they can help solve only a narrowly defined problem through a keyboard, scanner etc and the computer responds with the answer and explanation based on the facts and the rules that have been extracted from human and expert and stored in the computer.
Disease is a illness departure from health caused by a particular destructive process in an organ in the body, with a specific cause and characteristics symbols, medicine is the science and act concerned with the cure and prevention of disease and the prevention of health disorderliness. This purpose can be achieved through diagnosis and treatments. Normally the patients go to the hospital/medical center knowledge to diagnose the patients based on the information available.
Some drugs, tablets, injection. Capsules e.t.c will be recommended by the doctor/physician depending on the nature of suspected or identified diseases. Then the patient will take the drugs based on the doctor’s prescription.
Conversely, computers are known to have much definition and it is the most important inventions of the twentieth century. The oxford dictionary of current English defines computer as an electronic device which stores data, analyze it and produce information as required by the data input. In addition, computer can be considered as an electronic device which has the capability of accepting incoming data into the memory holding it, processing it at a high speed to produce result accurately.
In a nut shell, communicable diseases comprise of clinically evident illness, that is, characteristic medical signs and/or symptoms of diseases, resulting from the infection, presence and growth of pathogenic biological agents in an individual organism.
- BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
An expert system is a software system that attempts to reproduce the performance of one or more human experts, most commonly in a specific problem domain, and is a traditional application and/or subfield of artificial intelligence. A wide variety of methods can be used to simulate the performance of the expert however common to most or all are
1) The creation of a so-called “knowledgebase” which uses some knowledge representation formalism to capture the subject matter experts (SME) knowledge and
2) A process of gathering that knowledge from the SME and codifying it according to the formalism, which is called knowledge engineering. Expert systems may or may not have learning components but a third common element is that once the system is developed it is proven by being placed in the same real world problem solving situation as the human SME, typically as an aid to human workers or a supplement to some information system.
As a premiere application of computing and artificial intelligence, the topic of expert systems has many points of contact with general systems theory, operations research, business process reengineering and various topics in applied mathematics and management science.
Two illustrations of actual expert systems can give an idea of how they work. In one real world case at a chemical refinery a senior employee was about to retire and the company was concerned that the loss of his expertise in managing a fractionating tower would severely impact operations of the plant. A knowledge engineer was assigned to produce an expert system reproducing his expertise saving the company the loss of the valued knowledge asset. Similarly a system called Mycin was developed from the expertise of best diagnosticians of bacterial infections whose performance was found to be as good as or better than the average clinician. An early commercial success and illustration of another typical application (a task generally considered overly complex for a human) was an expert system fielded by DEC in the 1980s to quality check the configurations of their computers prior to delivery. The eighties were the time of greatest popularity of expert systems and interest lagged after the onset of the AI Winter.
In like manner, developing one of such system to represent the repository of the knowledge of a medical doctor is as essential as any other expert system. To this end, this project, Expert System on the Diagnosis of communicable diseases is a necessity.
1.2 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
Health care facility should be accessible by all at all times. But some of the people that should access these facilities are far removed from these facilities. More so, in the few available facilities, qualified medical personnel are always key issues that need urgent redress.
In view of the foregoing, it would be of great necessity to provide a computerized system that will provide a complementary medical service, such as medical disease diagnosis in places where accessibility is a problem as well as health care facilities where qualified experts are lacking, hence this topic, Development of a case based Expert System forDiagnosing Communicable Diseases.
- AIMS AND OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY
The major objective of this work is to develop an expert system on diagnosis of communicable diseases. It also targets towards contributing to academic research work.
It is also to ascertain whether the diseases could be diagnosed based on signs and symptoms.
It will also examine a patient based on simple clinical signs, and to improve family and community health
- SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY
If this prototype is fully developed will be very useful in many areas such as:
- It will help to retain the skill of an expert medical doctor in case of any eventuality;
- It can support academic development;
- It can be useful in many hospitals, both private and government, cases where the expert is not on seat;
- It can also be used in the laboratory for quick research work.
- SCOPE OF THE STUDY
The scope of this study is mainly focused on the diagnosis process in the medical institution. This will pay attention on communicable diseases, it is intended to cover only on how to diagnose, and store patients records, also modify, view and produce reports regarding to the patients infected.
This project is limited only to diagnose, addition, modifying, deleting, viewing and producing report about the patient suffering from communicable disease, within this area of study, the communicable diseases to be considered are: Malaria, Cholera, Tetanus, Hepatitis,Typhoid Fever, Tuberculosis, Influenza (Flu), Whooping Cough, Measles and Chicken Pox
This limitation is due to time constraint unreliability of some research materials, financial constraint and economic problems.
The scope of this work will also include the following
- A dynamic database system that can act as a knowledge based system
- A complete model of an expert system to portray sample troubleshooter
- Explore the power of visual basic in data handling
- To implement a dynamic search system
- LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY
The major constraint faced during the implementation of this work was finance. This is among other frustrations such as program failures during modular construction stages. Time was another important factor that limited the extent to which I want to research.
- RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
This research is the process of arriving at a dependable solution to problem through planned and systematic collection of data, analysis and interpreting of such data. It therefore shows that the writers intends on gathering data and the various procedures that would be adopted in the analysis of the numerous data obtained in the course of the research is both the primary and secondary research methodology.
- Primary research: this is the materials close to the subject of investigation and subject matter. Raw facts were gathered through interview, observation e.t.c.
- Secondary research: this is the material or information s that was collected from other writers in related fields of study. These are text books, journals e.t.c from a part of this project research.
The materials used in the project are:
- Data capturing tools.
-interview
-questionnaire
-observing or literature review and review of records.
- Program tools
-flow chart
-Algorithm
-programming language
-visual basic
- System design tools
-system flow chart
-input design
-output design
-file design access method
-storage media and device
- System analysis tools
1.7.1 RESEARCH QUESTIONS
This project will provide answers to many questions, the major ones are:
- What is a disease?
- What are the causes of diseases?
- Can diseases be communicable?
- How can diseases be commune?
- How do you think communicable diseases should be diagnose
- In what ways are communicable diseases developing in your area?
- Do you think there is age limit for contacting diseases?
- How do you think communicable diseases should be treated?
- Mention two communicable diseases in your locality?
- Should the diagnosis process in the medical institution be automated?
- Do you notice any problem with the manual method of diagnosis?
1.8 DEFINITION OF TERMS/VARIABLES
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Medical: Relating to medicine,physical examination to determinehealth:a physical examination by a doctor to check
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Knowledge-based: Information system that store wealth of one’s knowledge
Symptoms: Signs of an ill health
Software: Software consist o f various programming aids that are supplied by the computer manufacturer to facilitate the user’s efficient operation of equipment.
Hardware: the hardware of a system is all the physical part or piece of equipment.
Computer; This is an electronic mechanical device having the ability to receive store, process or retrieve information at a tremendous speed, acting under series of instructions called program.
Discharge: After a patient has attained a good percentage of health stability during admission, the patient is allowed to go home, but may be giving appointment for revisiting the doctor.
Diagnostics: process of identifying an illness by carrying our tests.
HID: Health information department.
Health information: complete information on status, type of illness, cause of illness e.t.c
Knowledge Base: having specialist expert knowledge of a particular field of study.
Patient: person with health issues that needs medical care.
Process: This is a program in execution.
System Design: This includes features, decisions about what the new system would do, and how it would do it.
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