DIAGNOSIS AND RECOMMENDER SYSTEM FOR SOME NEGLECTED TROPICAL DISEASES

Failure to promptly diagnose and treat of some tropical diseases such as chicken pox, cholera and typhoid fever is affecting the community-based management of such diseases. The high mortality rates caused by these diseases make the quest for effective diagnoses and appropriate treatment an essential task. Thus, precise diagnosis of these diseases coupled with appropriate treatment will result in their control, especially in the tropical regions, which also constitute the developing countries. The system works for this research was based on the client/server architecture, structured as a 3-tier application. The Web browser constituted the first tier, a middleware engine using some dynamic Web content technology active server pages (ASP) constituted the middle-tier and the database was the third tier. The implementation of the system had a front- end web based graphical user interface (GUI) application and back-end relational database management system (RDBMS). The Front–end was implemented with ASP.NET (using vb.net-programming language), while the back-end was designed with Microsoft queried language (MS SQL) server 2005. With this development, a prompt medical diagnosis, effective drug recommendations and promulgation of effective policies could be provided at community settings where there are shortages in material and human resources for managing these neglected tropical diseases

‘For the convenience and comfort of the persons employed by them’: The Lowell Corporation Hospital, 1839-1930’

The first industrial hospital in America opened in 1840 in Lowell, Massachusetts. The Lowell Corporation Hospital was sponsored by the town’s textile employers for ninety years. This article analyses the contextual complications surrounding the employers’ sustained funding of the hospital. Motivations for sustained sponsorship included paternalism, clinical excellence, business custom, the labour situation in Lowell, civic duty and the political advantages of paternalism. By analysing the changing local context of the hospital, this article argues that a broader, more integrated approach to healthcare histories and institution histories is needed if we are to fully understand the myriad of healthcare providers and their local and national importance

Implementation of XpertMalTyph: An Expert System for Medical Diagnosis of the Complications of Malaria and Typhoid

The dearth of medical experts in the developing world has subjected a large percentage of its populace to preventable ailments and deaths. Also, because of the predominant rural communities, the few medical experts that are available always opt for practice in the few urban cities. This consequently puts the rural communities at a disadvantage with respect to access to quality health care services. In this work, we designed and implemented XpertMalTyph; a novel medical diagnostic expert system for the various kinds of malaria and typhoid complications. A medical diagnostic expert system uses computer(s) to simulate medical doctor skills in diagnosis of ailments and prescription of treatments, hence can be used to provide the same service in the absence of the experts. XpertMalTyph is based on JESS (Java Expert System Shell) programming because of its robust inference engine and rules for implementing expert system

A mutation in caspase-9 decreases the expression of BAFFR and ICOS in patients with immunodeficiency and lymphoproliferation

Lymphocyte apoptosis is mainly induced by either death receptor-dependent activation of caspase-8 or mitochondria-dependent activation of caspase-9. Mutations in caspase-8 lead to autoimmunity/lymphoproliferation and immunodeficiency. This work describes a heterozygous H237P mutation in caspase-9 that can lead to similar disorders. H237P mutation was detected in two patients: Pt1 with autoimmunity/lymphoproliferation, severe hypogammaglobulinemia and Pt2 with mild hypogammaglobulinemia and Burkitt lymphoma. Their lymphocytes displayed defective caspase-9 activity and decreased apoptotic and activation responses. Transfection experiments showed that mutant caspase-9 display defective enzyme and proapoptotic activities and a dominant-negative effect on wild-type caspase-9. Ex vivo analysis of the patients' lymphocytes and in vitro transfection experiments showed that the expression of mutant caspase-9 correlated with a downregulation of BAFFR (B-cell-activating factor belonging to the TNF family (BAFF) receptor) in B cells and ICOS (inducible T-cell costimulator) in T cells. Both patients carried a second inherited heterozygous mutation missing in the relatives carrying H237P: Pt1 in the transmembrane activator and CAML interactor (TACI) gene (S144X) and Pt2 in the perforin (PRF1) gene (N252S). Both mutations have been previously associated with immunodeficiencies in homozygosis or compound heterozygosis. Taken together, these data suggest that caspase-9 mutations may predispose to immunodeficiency by cooperating with other genetic factors, possibly by downregulating the expression of BAFFR and ICO

MyHomePharmacy: Mobile Android Application

Pharmacy can be define a place where the medication drugs used for treating disease are distributed or sold. It is also referred as a place where the end user or professional user such as doctors get the supplies of medicine for personal or professional uses. Does not know what the correct and suitable medicine for a particular minor disease in a critical time is a problem for most of the students and parents. It is crucial to have the accurate information regarding the correct and suitable medicine and advice particularly for minor diseases and illness. This is because the wrong consumption of medicine or drugs not only will cause minor disease to the consumers or illness, it also can cause death to them. MyHomePharmacy is an application which is developed to be used on smartphone or mobile devices that used Android as the operating system. It is designed to give correct information on selection process of medicine for the minor diseases and illness in order to make sure the end user does not consume unsuitable drugs and medicine. The application also aims to deliver suitable and correct advices and tips associated with minor disease and illness to speed up the recovery process of the patient. Interview method have been selected for requirement gathering analysis of this application, all requirement has been translated to functional and non-functional requirement and Unified Modelling Language (UML) for development purposes. Rapid Application Development was selected to be the system development lifecycle (SDLC) to ensure that the application can be delivered within the time constraints. The prototype has been developed with Adobe PhoneGap platform that provide the developer with wide range of android capabilities and features with easy to learn steps. The important reasoning element, Unified Modelling Language (UML) diagram and MyHomePharmacy prototype serve as result and outcome of this research project. The (UML) diagrams include Use Case, Activity, and Class diagram. User Acceptance Test and Application Functionality Test have been conducted. There are 60% user rated good for User Acceptance Test and 80% functionality success recorded. All the recommendations and improvements about the prototype are recorded for future reference and alteration. The future improvements include the neat and beautiful user interface and able to display wide range of diseases selected for the application

Transformation of UML Activity Diagram for Enhanced Reasoning

IT industry has adopted the unified modelling language activity diagram (UML-AD) as a de facto standard. UML AD facilitates modellers to graphically represent and document business processes to show the flow of activities and behaviour of a system. However, UML AD has many drawbacks such as lack of formal semantics i.e. ontology used for the constructs based on intuition, that vaguely describes processes and no provision for verifiability. Petri Net (PN) has been around for decades and used to model the workflow systems but PNs and its variants are too complex for business process modellers with no prior experience. A logical foundation is desirable to construct a business process with a precision that facilitates in transforming UML AD into a formal mechanism supported by verifiability capabilities for enhanced reasoning. Therefore, in this paper, we will provide a framework that will provide formal definitions for UML AD core terms and constructs used for modelling, and subsequently transform them to formal representation called point graph(PG). This will provide an insight into UML AD and will improve the overall functionality required from a modelling tool. A case study is conducted at King’s College Hospital trust’ to improve their patient flows of an accident and emergency (A&E) department

Columbus Courier, 10-18-1918

https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/columbus_courier_news/1270/thumbnail.jp

Mobile application development in Africa

textThis work takes a look at how some of the challenges facing the African Continent can be tackled by the use of Mobile Phone Applications. Mobile phone penetration in Africa is very high, as indicated by statistics from South Africa in 2009 which showed that 70% of all South Africans owned a cell-phone. As such, the mobile phone is the ideal infrastructure platform to introduce technology applications that can be easily accessed by the general public. The paper briefly discusses the current state of mobile applications on the continent including some key applications presently deployed and how they are being used to meet some major social challenges faced. The work then proposes the creation of the Mobile Doctor Application, a tool that gives simple solutions to end-users in response to their health related text message queries. The key stakeholders for this application and their respective roles are then discussed. The paper then details the requirements for the application, separates them logically and represents them graphically for a clear understanding. Also put forth are two possible different sets of architecture for this application, one fully manual and the other using different sets of technologies. Finally, each architecture is evaluated using compliance metrics and the ATAM Quality Attribute TreeElectrical and Computer Engineerin