E-Health Assistance for Antenatal Care

 

G. Saranya

Department of Information Technology, SRM University, Tamil Nadu, India

 

ABSTRACT:

Antenatal care refers to the health care, periodic and regular supervision to a pregnant woman throughout pregnancy until labor which will help reducing maternal death rates and miscarriages as well as birth defects, low birth weight, newborn infections and other preventable health problems. E-health plays a vital role to improve and assist independent living of the pregnant women. A national e-health strategy sets out the objectives to promote the use of Communication devices like computer, mobile phone and communication satellite in the health sector. Some of the report’s findings say 94% of countries have a national policy for women’s and children’s health; Fifty-six per cent of countries report that e-health is supporting major women’s and children’s health initiatives. This paper is an attempt to show that the proposed system called e-health assistance is a perfect companion for the pregnant women in various stages of pregnancy and it provides guidance throughout the course of pregnancy to prevent potential health problems while promoting healthy life styles. The proposed system is a mobile and web application which has features such as providing repository for all the medical history and reports, calculate due date and BMI, suggesting health and nutrition tips periodically based on the medical reports, social networking among other pregnant women in the nearby location.

 

 

 

 

I INTRODUCTION:

Medical Facility is one of the most important basic amenities. The need for medical awareness is increased proportionally in recent years. Gestation is a delicate period in women’s life with complex physiological changes [1][2]. In 2000 approximately 600 000 women died from complications related to delivery or maternity [3][4]. Majority of maternal deaths occur in developing countries. The antenatal care health system in developing countries has been adapted from developed countries to improve reproductive health. Attending antenatal clinical checkups and professional delivery reduces maternal death rate. As a result, World Health Organization recommends 5-visit schedule for low risk pregnancy and 9-visit for high risk pregnancy [5][6].

 

As per the UN data, in India, there are about 28 neonatal deaths every 1000 for the year 2015. Awareness about various needs such as nutrition, exercise, location of clinics and availability of doctors, credibility and success rate of doctors is still lacking among many pregnant women [7][8][9]. In many countries, the greater number of births occurs without the assistance of professional attendants. To improve traditional home deliveries and to reduce maternal deaths, many trained birth attendants have been trained in modern delivery care [10] [11]. With the increase in usage of internet and other technologies and with the increase in smart phones users, the proposed system tries to achieve being a single stop for various needs of pregnant women. The proposed system is to be developed as mobile application and a web application.

 

The proposed system maintains the patient’s history, medical reports, history of doctors visited and their diagnosis in a single repository common for both mobile and web application. The system is also proposed to be integrated with online services for cab services and doctor’s appointment. It will act as a single window to provide all the above mentioned features and also can provide information about the list of doctors available based on the location and the patient’s review about the doctors [12][13] Integrating with the cab services is achieved by the APIs provided by some of the famous cab services such as OLA and UBER. For knowing the available doctors and their credibility and to book appointment, API provided by sites such as Practo is used [14]. This would facilitate pregnant women to know best rated doctors near the provided location and to book an appointment with the doctor of their choice.

 

The proposed system also acts as a social networking where patients can chat with other patients and build up a relationship which would help them mutually by exchange various kinds of medical related knowledge between them.  IM services such as Google Cloud Messaging service is used to achieve this [15].

 

II. PROPOSED SYSTEM:

The proposed system is basically an application which facilitates in bringing some of the key needs of pregnant women in a single place. The main aim of the system is to provide a repository for all the medical reports of the patient in a single place and to gather some medical reports from the patients and to provide suggestions of nutrition and exercise to be followed on a regular basis [2][10]. The modules of e-Health as follows

 

A.      Authentication:

For the first-time user, registration is involved. User will have to provide some of the basic information about the date of pregnancy, age, name and some medical questionnaires.  Already registered user authenticates with existing user name and password. All the information will be stored in cloud DB which would facilitate the user to login from multiple machines.

 

B.Updating Medical results and reports:

The application has a provision for the user to upload the medical reports and doctor’s prescription in either PDF or JPEG formats. Mobile phones will be handy to capture the picture of the reports and upload in the system. User can later view the reports which will be shown chronologically. There is a section in the application which will have various sets of questionnaires to gather information such as Blood Pressure, sugar level, medical history and other essential medical queries which will play the key role for the nutritionist and medical experts to provide users with nutrition and other medical tips. Both Mobile version and web version of the application will consume the Web API hosted in cloud to save the data

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C.      Authentication for the medical experts:

Physicians and Nutritionists can login to the portal using their credentials with Experts role. They will have a provision to view all the medical history and reports of the patient by providing the patient user Id. They will also have a provision to search based on the name and Date of birth of the patient. Physician and Nutritionist can look at the medical repository of the patient and can map the various nutrition suggestions and exercise videos which are already available in the system repository to the patient’s profile. These tips and suggestions will be scheduled to send to the patient as a reminder periodically during different times of the day.   

 

D.      Due Date and BMI:

When you get to know that you are pregnant, first thing you wanted to know is your expected delivery date. A normal pregnancy can be between 38 to 42 weeks or on an average 280 days. Only 5% of birth takes place on the estimated due date and about 80% of babies are giving birth within 10 days of due date.

 

Due date can be calculated using Naegele’s Rule add 1 year and subtract 3 months and add 7 days to the first day of last menstrual period.

 

This system will also help in calculating BMI based on user height and weight. Based on the results of BMI calculation we will provide healthy food tips and updates [7].

 

E.       Tips for the day:

Once the Physicians and Nutritionists maps the nutrition, medical and exercise tips to patient’s profile, the windows service in the system will fetch the tips along with the information of when those tips to be followed and will send the tips as SMS notification to the patient. In order to send SMS, BulkSMS application is utilized. BulkSMS provides most comfortable SMS gateway for transmitting text messages over 800 mobile networks. Patient can also login to their profile and see the videos and other detailed information of the tips.

 

F.       Social Networking:

The Pregnant women can search and find other pregnant women nearby their location and can connect with them with the chat option available in the application. This social networking helps them gain confidence during the gestation period and also helps in sharing some essential knowledge between them. IM service such as Google Cloud Messaging Service is used to achieve social networking in the application.

 

G.      Booking an appointment and booking Cabs:

Though there are separate applications available to book an appointment with doctor and to book a cab, this application gives this as an add-on feature in order to bring all the necessities of the user in a single place. User can book an appointment with a doctor through this app which will list down all the available doctors based on the location provided by the user. User can also see the doctors’ profile for ratings and user reviews of the doctor and decide accordingly before booking. The cab services are integrated with the application through restful service. Various Cab Services such as Ola, Uber is integrated with the application. User has a provision to choose between the cab vendors and book a cab.

 

 

 

Fig 1: System Architecture of E-Health Application

 

III. CONCLUSION:

In this paper, we have proposed a system which will be a medical repository for the registered user. The system will be benefitted very much by the pregnant women in knowing some essential information for a healthy pregnancy. It also helps pregnant women in building up a relationship with other pregnant women in the nearby location.

 

REFERENCES:

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Accepted on 07.06.2017           © RJPT All right reserved