CHAPTER ONE

1.0     INTRODUCTION

One of the applications of medical information has been the implementation and use of expert system to predict medical diagnosis based on a set of symptoms.

Furthermore, such expert systems serve as aid to laboratory testing routines and effective treatments. An intelligent computer program assisting medical diagnosis offer the physician easy access to a wealth of information from past patient data such resources may help hospitals reduce excessive cost from unnecessary laboratory testing and ineffective patient treatment, while maintaining high quality of medical care.

These develop an improved expert system e.i. computerized system that will build the unfailing method or knowledge base for such a system. On major drawback of conventional medical expert system are, they use static knowledge bases, developed from a limited population size and a limited number of case demographic and geographic location.

The knowledge base is inherently not dynamic and is not undated to keep up with emerging trends such as the appearance of increase prevalence of diagnosis before now unseen.

Thus, after a given period of time this inflexibility limits the use of the knowledge base as it no longer reflects the current characteristics of the population at risk.

Given this point, the development of a knowledge base using this artificial network technology naturally lend itself toward the task of predicting  medical diagnosis. In addition, this technology appear to be promising method for recommendation possibly routines.

One to it dynamic nature and online learning capability and web network knowledge-base date, thus, once an initial knowledge-base has been set up it can effectively capture varying ailment trends in a given population while retaining its precious knowledge.

This research will construct a web-base network capable of predicting various medical diagnosis with a plausible degree of accuracy.

The data to be use for this task are:

1)      Patient demography

2)      Present vital signs

3)      Present of specific symptom in patient

4)      Patient verbal complaints

5)      The diagnosis by physician

The element of the first four components serve as an input variable to the network and the last (fifth) component serve as the output.

Therefore, the task of the web-base network is to draw a dynamic correlation between the patient’s presentations, using self reported symptoms and vital signs (complaint 1 to 4) and the diagnosis recorded by the physician (complaints).

The patient’s demographics and vital sign are key element in providing dues to an ailment. It was observed that the patient literal complains provides great in sight for predicting medical diagnosis.

1.1     STATEMENT OF PROBLEM

The major problem in training a web-base network to patient diagnosis is to process the data in such a manner as could be interpreted by the neural networks variable transformation modules.

The steps toward achieving this will involve using a software package that will suit such task, this application will help the physician every patient. Problems facing manual system or conventional system in hospital are:

i)       INSECURITY OF DATA:- Hospitals where manual system is in operation, data are not very secured due to the way patient file are being kept in the hospitals.

ii)      LACK OF FILE ORGANIZATION:- Using manual  or conventional system of file/cards organization in hospital causes a tedious problem to the nurses/physician during storing processing and searching of past patient files.

iii)     Manual system does not permit file keeping for a very long time.

iv)     TEDIOUS AND STRESSFUL:- Manual Operating Hospital find jobs stressful and time consuming around them.

v)      ILLEGIBILITY IN WRITING:- Illegible writing sometimes causes time wasting while searching for patients file. Hence these works will art against those negative vises.

1.2     OBJECTIVES OF THE RESEARCH

The objectives of this project research are:

i)       To assist physician facilitate reasonable task, treatment and minimize unnecessary laboratory routines so as to reduce operational cost.

ii)      To predict medical diagnosis and possible treatment.

iii)     To construct and train Artificial web-base network (AWBN) that will serve as a dynamic “Look up Table” for accurate classification of medical diagnosis due to patient symptoms.

1.3     SCOPE OF STUDY     

Really, it has been understood that disease exist everywhere at anywhere, in handling these disease we actually need software to diagnosis and give possible treatment to the various diseases.

For this reason, the project will produce a program that will diagnose some communicable disease. The program will be able to display such information as:

i)       The name of the diseases

ii)      The symptoms

iii)     Possible prescription for treatment

1.4     DEFINITION OF TERMS

AILMENT                                        _____                   An illness that is not very serious.

COMMUNICABLE DISEASES       _____                   These are diseases that can easily be                                                                                   transferred or passed from one person                                                                                       to another.

DEMOGRAPHICS                           _____                   This is scientific study of the changing                                                                        number in a community for a period of                                                                              time. 

MEDICAL DIAGNOSIS                  _____                   The act of discovering of identifying                                                                               the exact course of an illness and                                                                                       injury as well as to predict treatment.

NEURAL NETWORK                      _____                   This is a network of connected element                                                                          inspired from studies of biological                                                                                nervous system.

PHYSICIAN                                     _____                   A specialist in general medicine                                                                                       treatment in a hospital from a doctor.

PLAUSIBLE                                     _____                   Statement that is reasonable and likely                                                                              to be true.

SYMPTOMS                                    _____                   Changes in one’s body or mind that                                                                                shows that patient is not healing.

EEIZURES                                       _____                   Sudden attack of an illness especially                                                                                 one that affect the brain.

SMEAR                                            _____                   A medical vest in which a very small                                                                                        tissue is removed from a cervix for a                                                                               cancer test.

SCREEN                                           _____                   To examine people in order to find out                                                                          if they have a particular disease or                                                                                illness.

SCAN                                               _____                   A medical test for pregnant woman, in                                                                      which a machine is used to produce a                                                                                       picture of the baby in the mother’s                                                                                body.

CANCER                                          _____                   Is a serious disease in the body and kill                                                                           normal cells of the body.

MELANOMA                                   _____                   A type of cancer that appear as a dark                                                                               spot on the skin.

DIABETIC                                        _____                   Having a connected with diabetes.

NEURON                                         _____                   A cell that carries information from the                                                                         brain to the other part of the body.

EPILETIC                                         _____                   A person suffering from a disorder of                                                                               the nervous that causes                                                                                                 unconsciousness.

OSTEOARTHRITIS                         _____                   Disease that cause painful swelling and                                                                            permanent damage in the joint of the                                                                                  body especially the hips, knee etc.

OSTEOPOROSIS                                       _____                   A condition in which one becomes                                                                                   weak and is easily broken.

DR. C.O UKOLI (2002)          Management and Medical Emergency.