CeMS Centralized medical system

Abstract

For a common person, it is very difficult to manage all medical records. It is quite possible forpeople to forget to carry all the relevant medical prescriptions or lab reports along while visiting the doctor. Paper-based medical prescriptions may get torn or lost as well. Similarly if a patient is out of country or out of city,it will be more difficult to ensure availability of medical records for analysis, in medical emergency. Moreover for conducting research, statistical analysis or surveys on medical or health related issues (diseases, death occurrences etc.); Pakistan’s current paper-based medical records keeping system is useless. Towards this end, we built a system (consisting of a centralized web server as web service, an Android tablets application for doctors, an Android mobile application for patients and a desktop application in Java) to manage the medical records as described in Health Level 7(HL7)standard. From HL7 description, patient and prescription entities have been included in the system. Centralized server,which includes Apache as web server, MySQL for databases and PHP for server side intelligence, stores the data models for medical prescriptions, information of patients, hospitals, clinics, doctors and system operators. Desktop Application enables registration of the system roles (doctors, patients, hospitals etc.) with server and it also performs the submission of medical prescriptions along with patient’s attachments if required. Android tablets application for doctors allows the doctors to view medical prescription of patients along with their X-rays or other images (including Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) images support) on the tablet and it also encourages the doctor to prescribe from the tablet as well. Android mobile phones application for patients facilitates the patients to communicate their basic information and prescriptions information using GSM technology through sending text messages. The developed system provides fairly efficient solution for medical records management, hence facilitating common people not to worry about the loss of their medical records. With the help of the system, government organization, private companies, educational institutes and hospitals can use patient’s prescriptions information for their own relevant purposes.