Information technology has made an impact on the healthcare sector. Health
promotion has significantly expanded its recognition in the context or settings that is essential for effective research, practice, and policy in public health (Nykiforuk & Flaman, 2011). Innovation has made rapid advancements in the medicinal sciences field, extending from electronic medical records to medical analytics. As such, the use of ICT can improve the present condition of health. The number of interests has expanded in PCs and types of hospital information systems. This is because weighty, massive to use and difficult to monitor paper medical records. On the other hand, Balas (2001) proposes that the use of information systems will drastically improve healthcare in such cases, resulting in better human services, prevention of errors and patient fulfillment.
Since the adoption of the Sustainable Declaration, health has been a necessity in the Philippine development agenda. There are health-specific goals among the seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)—for good health and well-being and the fight against HIV / AIDS, malaria, and various diseases (SDG3). In addition, the poverty reduction target (SDG1) includes nutrition targets that have a specific impact on health; and three different targets address social measures that are critical to improving health education (SDG4), gender equality (SDG5), and environmental sustainability (SDGs 6, 12, 13, 14, and 15). With the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nation (UN) aiming to improve health and reduce poverty by 2030, and ever increasing threats of diseases globally. According to World Health Organization (WHO), about 56.9 million deaths worldwide in 2016, more than half (54%) were due to communicable and noncommunicable disease causes. These diseases have remained the leading causes of death globally in the last 15 years. In the Philippines, government is faced with numerous challenges concerning major health issues in the country. In 2016, an average of 1,591 persons died daily. This translates to 66 deaths per hour or one (1) per minute.
Retrieved from DOH (2008), disease warning system is recognized as important
in health decision-making and practice. Warning and report system is a key process in healthcare industry most importantly in communicable diseases (Khan et al., 2010). This provides information which can be used for planning, predictions, resource mobilization and early detection of epidemics. Internet based systems are intuitive, adaptable, operate almost in real time and are cheap to operate and maintain once they have been established (Malik et. al, 2011). Early Warning, Alert and Response System (EWARS) is a mobile application and web-based system designed to target new mesh vaccination pains and investigate suspected acute jaundice syndrome outbreaks (Karo et al., 2018). In most countries around the world, outbreaks of infectious and noninfectious diseases had caused harm to humans and involved a large amount of loss to individuals and governments. During outbreaks, it is important to have efficient health information systems (HIS) to manage all activities among different related agencies. Currently, the Philippine government funded the project PIDSR of the Department of Health (DOH), that provides a medium for government personnel to plan, predict, and detect diseases outbreaks. However, PIDSR is still under development in which some communications support was not optimal. This has motivated the researcher to develop an SMS-based framework of an automated warning and reporting system.
Iligan City, a city located in Northern Mindanao, Philippines, has a total of 44
barangays (villages), 15 are urban and 29 rural. Communicable diseases continue to be major causes of morbidity and mortality in the city. Infectious diseases such as influenza (2,833) and pneumonia (1,154) are leading causes of death. The morbidity report in 2018 by the CHO revealed the prevalence rates of non-communicable risk factors for cardiovascular diseases, such as coronary artery disease, stroke and peripheral arterial disease.
The rural barangays are in remote mountainous areas of the city, making healthcare delivery system difficult to manage. Usually, healthcare services are delayed, due to poor management of records and inefficient communication. Health service delivery is one the major concerns of the city. As stipulated in Art. II, Section 15 of the 1987 Philippine Constitution, the state is mandated to promote people’s health (De Leon, 2003). Indeed, government incurs much expense in the prevention and containment of diseases. Currently, the Iligan City Health Office are using Field Health Service Information System (FHSIS) to monitor city health delivery service delivery activities for the implementation of city health programs. However, it is only intended to address the short term needs of CHO and Local Government Units (LGUs) staff with managerial or supervisory functions infacilities and program areas and mainly focusing on some of the programs by the DOH namely, Maternal and Child (MCH), Family Planning, Expanded Program on Immunization, Control of Diarrheal Diseases, Tuberculosis, Malaria, Schistosomiasis and Leprosy Control progress, Dental Health, and Environmental Health.
According to Mahmud, Akter, & Rawshon (2012), mobile technology
especially Short Message Service (SMS) has huge impact in the communication system of modern civilization. The purpose of this study is to develop a reporting and warning system (via website and/or SMS) that alerts concern agencies and individuals for a potential disease outbreak event, which makes use of a visualization and descriptive analytics. Information visualization is converted into insights which allow for improved decision-making and strategizing from. While the descriptive analytics used to describe and present data in a format which can be easily understood by a wide variety of readers. Visualizing the specific situation and evidence while at the same time endorsing targets and techniques enables a compelling procedure to improve the general medicinal services delivery. The novelty of this work falls under the utilization of the SMS warning system in helping potential users to mitigate casualties related to communicable and noncommunicable diseases.
1.2 Statement of the Problem
One of the problems faced was the challenge of being able to deliver relevant health services along with valuable clinical knowledge in a very timely manner at avenues of the government, from prevention to treatment. Daily, around hundreds of individuals entering Barangay Health Center (BHC) and Iligan City Hospitals. Hence, the passing of information from one BHCs and Hospitals to City Health Office (CHO) must be timely. A few causal factors were found: (1) trouble in processing huge amount of physical data; (2) difficulty in report generation because of manual transportation of records; (4) delay in report submission. These are the specific questions that the researchers aim to answer:
1. What are the features of this said system?
2. How can the system manage to give information in a timely manner?
1.3 Objectives of the Study
The main objective of the study is to develop a reporting and warning system to enable the health units to provide tailored health information through an SMS-based for reporting about the warning and to summarize data on health service delivery at the barangay and city government by graphical visualization.
The specific objectives of the study are:
1. To gather and analyze data.
2. To identify critical challenges of the current ways of the government unit. 3. To review similar projects and implementations in other organizations or countries. Survey the current literature on HIS to find current and upcoming solutions to the critical challenges. 4. To create a prototype of the reporting and warning system for health institutions 5. To provide a framework of the warning and reporting process 6. To perform a system walkthrough with health professionals and potential users
1.4 Scope and Limitation of the Study
The target users of this study are the decision makers, in particular, government officers facilitating the health office and centers in the local. Second target users are clinicians, public healthcare practitioners. There are several limitations of his study. First, the data collected specifies only in Iligan City. Second, the study only limited to a few of domains such as public health, software development and change management plan that would hamper thoroughness; covering as many domains as possible would be unrealistic. To achieve focus, the study concentrates only on critical issues on a macroscopic perspective. This study presents the proposal of warning and report health information system. The scope starts from patient registration at a NDP to generate automated SMS information about the potential outbreak of infectious and noninfectious diseases to the health professionals to program planning and prescription from the health unit.
1.5 Significance of the Study
Healthcare Professionals: The study's significance lies in empowering health
professionals with the ability to address the growing challenges of growing rural and urban areas and the need for better health care. This is relevant not only to the user of the proposed system, but to a greater extent, the move of the Philippines towards the United Nations SDGs in 2030, including good health and well-being, and the World Health Assembly 2030 agenda (WHA) to strengthen national capacity to implement an integrated disease surveillance system and respond to outbreaks to stop mosquito replication. As such, these goals can be attained with the help of the proposed system.
Barangay Health Centers: It provides a pre-emptive response in society by
incorporating descriptive model systems in Iligan City which are at high risk from diseases, and a reports of possible disease outbreaks. The survey will provide a warning through an Automated SMS. Thus, the results of this study will be further explored in the interests of society and local health bodies in Iligan City, given that disease reporting is an important element in their efforts to manage diseases.
Reference
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[4] Mahmud, I., Akter, J., & Rawshon, S. (2012). Sms Based Disaster Alert System in Developing Countries : a Usability Analysis. EXCEL International Journal of Multidisciplinary Management Studies, 2(4), 1–15.
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[8] Karo, B., Haskew, C., Khan, A. S., Polonsky, J. A., & Buddha, N. (2018). World Health Organization Early Warning, Alert and Response System in the Rohingya Crisis, Bangladesh, 2017–2018, 24(11), 2017–2018.
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