Understanding the introduction and use of a mobile device-supported health information system in Nigeria

Copyright @ 2014 The Authors.This paper presents an in-depth analysis of efforts to introduce a mobile health information system in Nigeria as part of a development initiative aimed at improving maternal and child health. Specifically, it examines the use of mobile devices to facilitate maternal health information accessibility and exchange among health practitioners in order to reducing maternal, newborn and child mortality. Further, it also looks at the challenges raised while introducing mobile devices into work practices in the healthcare sector. The study adopts a case study approach, relying on semi-structured interviews and document analysis as its main methods for collecting data. The specific case examined is a mobile phone-based information system introduced to support a national government effort in Nigeria, known as the midwives service scheme. The findings of this study show that this integrated approach of using mobile phones to support (health) information systems has vast potential; for instance increasing the timeliness of (health) data available to stakeholders for monitoring and planning purposes. However, we also find that over time, attaining the potential of development efforts such as this remains difficult as initiatives involving the use of mobile devices is not just about getting the technical aspect right. It is equally dependent on deep seated social-cultural influences such as poor political and financial commitment. These two mutually reinforcing influences have been identified in this study as significant impediments to efforts of this kind. Therefore, this paper argues for, first a strong political commitment across all levels of government whereby their words are backed with action. Second it is important that the government maintains financial integrity by releasing the funds budgeted to support the smooth running of these efforts, for such initiatives to thrive and ultimately contribute to development

Delivery of broadband services to SubSaharan Africa via Nigerian communications satellite

Africa is the least wired continent in the world in terms of robust telecommunications infrastructure and systems to cater for its more than one billion people. African nations are mostly still in the early stages of Information Communications Technology (ICT) development as verified by the relatively low ICT Development Index (IDI) values of all countries in the African region. In developing nations, mobile broadband subscriptions and penetration between 2000-2009 was increasingly more popular than fixed broadband subscriptions. To achieve the goal of universal access, with rapid implementation of ICT infrastructure to complement the sparsely distributed terrestrial networks in the hinterlands and leveraging the adequate submarine cables along the African coastline, African nations and their stakeholders are promoting and implementing Communication Satellite systems, particularly in Nigeria, to help bridge the digital hiatus. This paper examines the effectiveness of communication satellites in delivering broadband-based services

Development and Deployment of VoiceXML-Based Banking Applications

In recent times, the financial sector has become one of the most vibrant sectors of the Nigerian economy with about twenty five banks after the bank consolidation / merger exercise. This sector presents huge business investments in the area of Information and Communication Technology (ICT). It is also plausible to say that the sector today is the largest body of ICT services and products users. It is no gainsaying the fact that so many Nigerians now carry mobile phones across the different parts of the country. However, applications that provide voice access to real-time banking transactions from anywhere, anytime via telephone are still at their very low stage of adoption across the Nigerian banking and financial sector. A versatile speech-enabled mobile banking application has been developed using VXML, PHP, Apache and MySQL. The developed application provides real-time access to banking services, thus improving corporate bottom-line and Quality of Service (QoS) for customer satisfaction

A Fuzzy Association Rule Mining Expert-Driven (FARME-D) approach to Knowledge Acquisition

Fuzzy Association Rule Mining Expert-Driven (FARME-D) approach to knowledge acquisition is proposed in this paper as a viable solution to the challenges of rule-based unwieldiness and sharp boundary problem in building a fuzzy rule-based expert system. The fuzzy models were based on domain experts’ opinion about the data description. The proposed approach is committed to modelling of a compact Fuzzy Rule-Based Expert Systems. It is also aimed at providing a platform for instant update of the knowledge-base in case new knowledge is discovered. The insight to the new approach strategies and underlining assumptions, the structure of FARME-D and its practical application in medical domain was discussed. Also, the modalities for the validation of the FARME-D approach were discussed

Factors That Affect the Use of Ict in Nursing Profession in Ebonyi State Nigeria

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has become a major tool in the delivery of health services just as it has made a great impact on other sectors. In Health, it has given birth to e-health, Health informatics, tele-health, etc. The primary focus of this paper is to outline and discus the factors that affect the use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in Nursing profession in Ebonyi State. The paper also analyzed and found out that the problems of ICT application in Nursing profession are paramount in preventing the successful implementation of health informatics in Ebonyi State. It went ahead to suggest the possible solutions to the identified problems. The paper concluded that nurses need to engage fully in ICT so that they contribute to shaping the care system and emerge as leaders of the new care system. Keywords: ICT, e-Health, health Informatics, Nursing, Internet, computing, telephony

Towards Developing an Online Social Media-based Mobile Learning System

The advancement of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and the Internet revolution gave rise to the several learning technologies on the web and mobile platform. During the last decade, the social media network became available for users to socialise and collaborate among peer group. Hence, The integration of e-learning and social media using mobile device as access point is to allow for learning and collaboration anytime, anywhere. This study seeks to provide learning on the social network platform for users to view the application on a mobile device and also foster collaboration among scholars. The system was developed using an open source Content Management System (CMS) Wordpress and Buddypress running on a WAMP or XAMPP server. MySQL was used as database. The usability of the System on the different mobile devices used was evaluated by identifying the usability attributes; designing a questionnaire based on those attributes and then analyzing the results with Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS). The results showed that the learning system had a good usability score on mobile device

A FRAMEWORK FOR INTELLIGENT VOICE-ENABLED E-EDUCATION SYSTEMS

Although the Internet has received significant attention in recent years, voice is still the most convenient and natural way of communicating between human to human or human to computer. In voice applications, users may have different needs which will require the ability of the system to reason, make decisions, be flexible and adapt to requests during interaction. These needs have placed new requirements in voice application development such as use of advanced models, techniques and methodologies which take into account the needs of different users and environments. The ability of a system to behave close to human reasoning is often mentioned as one of the major requirements for the development of voice applications. In this paper, we present a framework for an intelligent voice-enabled e-Education application and an adaptation of the framework for the development of a prototype Course Registration and Examination (CourseRegExamOnline) module. This study is a preliminary report of an ongoing e-Education project containing the following modules: enrollment, course registration and examination, enquiries/information, messaging/collaboration, e-Learning and library. The CourseRegExamOnline module was developed using VoiceXML for the voice user interface(VUI), PHP for the web user interface (WUI), Apache as the middle-ware and MySQL database as back-end. The system would offer dual access modes using the VUI and WUI. The framework would serve as a reference model for developing voice-based e-Education applications. The e-Education system when fully developed would meet the needs of students who are normal users and those with certain forms of disabilities such as visual impairment, repetitive strain injury (RSI), etc, that make reading and writing difficult

Implementation Assessment of Electronic Records Management System in Bayelsa State, Nigeria

The quality of information available to medical practitioners when delivering treatment to patients influences the outcome of service delivery. In the healthcare industry, health information technology has been shown to improve patient safety and treatment quality. The purpose of this research is to identify the facilitators and hurdles to the deployment of an electronic records management system at NDUTH, Okolobiri. For this study, a descriptive cross-sectional research design was used. The stratified random sample was taken from the 204 staff members that participated in the survey at NDUTH Okolobiri. Telephone interviews were also conducted with a small number of hospital staff who had deployed the electronic records system. According to the findings, the majority of participants (51.0%) were female, with an average age of 37(SD+9.0) years. The respondents’ overall understanding of electronic records management systems was 45.9%. The overall implementation rate was 22.8%. The study’s facilitators were leadership support along with the availability of ICT equipment, whereas the barriers were funding, a lack of power, insufficient ICT infrastructures, administrative challenges, poor staff compliance, a lack of government support, and poor maintenance of software and ICT equipment. The findings indicate that government and private enterprises should invest more in healthcare delivery via electronic records management systems. This is critical because the quality of information that medical practitioners have access to when caring for patients influences the effectiveness of health service delivery. It has also been discovered to ensure the proper operation of health institutions

Digital-Health Tourism Research-Methodology Coronavirus-Vaccination Trials: A Study Interpreting Geometa-Data Profiling to use Mobile-Health Technologies Nigeria

Digital-Health Tourism Innovation (DTI) worldwide is in its infancy due to the emergent of coronavirus (COVID-19) disease. With the growth of open geometa data, use of government electronic services including electronic health (e-health), electronic commerce (e-commerce) and mobile health (m-health), Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning strategies. Health and primary healthcare sectors are currently adopting these innovations for socio-economic wellbeing. Digital-health (also termed as e-health) is part of digital tourism innovation. Adapting geometa data profiling to develop a digital-health tourism framework for Primary Healthcare Workers (PHWs) to use mobile health technologies in COVID-19 vaccination trials are the key challenges of this study. Nevertheless, digital health tourism skills have been launched in developing Nations that created thousands of jobs to protect digital tourism businesses from potential vulnerabilities. Despite the benefits of this novel innovation, its deployment and implementation have been treated by inadequate of ICT facilities, lack of geometa data pre-processing to remove noise, data integrity, insufficient of academic research fundings, and reliable research methodology beyond COVID-19 vaccination trials to highlight these aspects. Therefore, qualitative, and quantitative research methods using Precaution Adoption Model Process (PAMP) questionnaire are employed to enable new ways of pre-processing behavior intention factors items. Eight academic researchers who were conversant with digital health technology validated 28 behavior intention factors with average factor loading values of 50% to 75%. Pilot survey conducted among 700 respondents from March 18, 2020, to September 10, 2021, among them are undergraduate students that may use this technology for research purposes. Pre-processed geometa data   have shown percentage frequency counts of internet access and other online services 8% to 95%, adapted training factors 49% to 92% and factor items 34% to 78.3% for hypothesis generation towards development of digital health tourism framework in finding explanation to COVID-19 economic challenges. Except behavior intention factors and factor items insights are known and mapped, mobile health technology design process may result in poor conclusions.  Thus, patients recovered from    COVID-19 infection can still be infected again

Discourse, Materiality, and the Users of Mobile Health Technologies: A Nigerian Case Study

mHealth, which is the use of mobile phones and other handheld information and communication technologies (ICTs), has been increasingly advocated as the solution to the problems, primarily infrastructure and personnel, facing the healthcare sector of many low-to-lower-middle-income countries (LMICs). Following a series of United Nations Foundation research and advisory publications (in 2012, 2014 and 2016) arguing that mobile phones are approaching ubiquity in Nigeria and across the world, the UN strongly recommended that LMICs undertake mHealth initiatives. Subsequently, Nigeria’s Federal Ministry of Health (FMOH) published a National Health ICT Strategic Framework (Strategic Framework), 2015-2020; the rallying call of this document is that “Health ICTs will deliver universal healthcare [in Nigeria] by 2020.” The document takes a techno-optimistic position that celebrates and advocates for the creation of mHealth technologies, yet it fails to acknowledge the dire lack of the basic, necessary infrastructures for such electronic health systems, particularly in rural areas, including a scarcity of reliable electrical systems or the trained personnel who would understand how to use such technologies. This creates and sustains a healthcare precarity for poor and rural Nigerians. The rhetoric of health and medicine has taken up precarity as a framework for understanding how modern discourses contribute to the material positioning of humans with respect to technological systems. Using material-discursive critique and precarity as analytical frameworks, I tie the history of western medicine in Nigeria to the prevailing top-down approach which created widespread healthcare deserts. Using Critical (Policy) Discourse Analysis, I also examine discursive positioning of agents, e.g., “stakeholders” in the Strategic Framework and “heroes” in an mHealth technology developed and advertised locally in Nigeria, to reveal how policy documents and popular advertisements around mHealth are manipulated to camouflage these healthcare deserts with techno-optimistic rhetoric. Only when we address both the actual material conditions and the rhetorical and linguistic silencing of the people in these rural or poor areas will we be able to approach the promised benefits of mHealth systems in universal healthcare