DSpace Collection: Thesis - Health Informatics

DEVELOPING A PREDICTIVE MODEL FOR FERTILITY PREFERENCE OF WOMEN OF REPRODUCTIVE AGE USING DATA MINING TECHNIQUES

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 08:26:20 GMT

Title: DEVELOPING A PREDICTIVE MODEL FOR FERTILITY PREFERENCE OF WOMEN OF REPRODUCTIVE AGE USING DATA MINING TECHNIQUES

Authors: TARIKU, DEBELA

Abstract: Background: Fertility is one of the major factors that determine the overall size, distribution and/or structure of a population. High fertility in developing countries(particularly, in the poorest of those countries) poses detrimental consequences like a high fraction of women experiencing pregnancies of order five and above and a greater likelihood of short interpregnancy intervals. These are threat to the health of mothers and their children. At a macrolevel, high fertility also contributes to high population growth which in turn results in slow economic growth, environmental degradation and unemployment, among others. Assessing fertility preference helps identify the proportion of women who demand for children and those who intend to limit childbearing. This aids in developing and implementing appropriate intervention programs for the purpose of achieving reductions in fertility levels necessary to slow population growth. Objective: To explore the possibility of applying data mining techniques in developing a model that can predict fertility preferences of women of reproductive age from EDHS2011 women’s survey dataset collect by CSA. Methodology: For this study, a six-step hybrid knowledge discovery process model was adopted. Through the steps, a dataset containing 15 attributes and 16515 records of women was constructed for building models. Results: Three data mining classification algorithms, J48, Naïve Byes and neural Network (Multilayer Perceptron), were tested using 10-fold-cross-validation. The classifiers were implemented on the dataset with all and selected features. Several experiments were constructed and the accuracy achieved on selected feature subset was 75.92%, 77.34%, 78.03% for Naïve Bayes, Multilayer Perceptron and J48, respectively. Conclusion: In this study, feature selection generally improved prediction performance of the classifiers. J48 model with accuracy of 78.03% was found to be relatively better predictor of fertility preference of women. This research study did indicate that data mining can be applied to women’s dataset to identify determinants of fertility preference and classify women according to their childbearing preferences. Age, number of living children, education, child death experience, marital status, sex of child and region are found to be the most important factors that determine fertility preference of women.

Description: A thesis submitted to the School of Graduate Studies of Addis Ababa University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Science in Health Informatics

INFORMATION NEEDS AND SEEKING BEHAVIOR AMONG HEALTH PROFESSIONALS WORKING AT GOVERNMENTAL HOSPITAL AND HEALTH CENTERS IN BAHIR DAR TOWN, AMHARA REGION, ETHIOPIA.

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 08:08:22 GMT

Title: INFORMATION NEEDS AND SEEKING BEHAVIOR AMONG HEALTH PROFESSIONALS WORKING AT GOVERNMENTAL HOSPITAL AND HEALTH CENTERS IN BAHIR DAR TOWN, AMHARA REGION, ETHIOPIA.

Authors: MULUSEW, ANDUALEM

Abstract: Background: Universal access to information for health professionals is a pre requisite for meeting the MDGs and achieving health for all strategy. In developing countries, a large proportion of the population, including health professionals have no or only poor access to health information resources due to poor infrastructures, economic related, poor attention, etc Objective: The purpose of this study is to assess information needs and seeking behavior of health professionals working at Governmental Hospitals and Health Centers in Bahir Dar town, Amhara Region, Ethiopia. Methods: A cross sectional study design using quantitative and qualitative approaches was carried out to achieve the research objectives using 350 study participants. Self-administered questionnaire and observation checklist were instruments to collect the required data. Manually edited data were entered in to computer using Epi-info version 3.5.1; further cleaned and exported to SPSS statistics version19; then cleaned again and analyzed as needed. Frequencies, cross tabulation, chi-square, Odds ratio with 95%CI, and Binary logistic regression analysis were done to describe and assess associations among variables of interest. Results: Nearly all (97.3%) of respondents reported that they need health information to update themselves and support daily activities. More than half (54%) encountered problems on their daily activities due to information limitation. Major barriers to access information were geographical, organizational, personal, economic related, educational status and time. Only 145 (42.8%) respondents have access to internet at different places with various frequencies and have shown statistically significant association (p <0.05) with age, sex, monthly income, computer literacy and access, patient seen per day, working experience, and working site. Majority of study participants have too much limited access to different information resources, especially library and internet. More than half (57.7%) respondents seek information by consulting their hard copies when there is a need. About 151(44.5%) respondents prefer to access on job trainings and soft copies next to hardcopies. Conclusions and recommendations: Almost all respondents need to access health information and more than 80% of study areas have no library, internet and computer services. Therefore, great attentions and efforts must be done to help those starved health professionals working at those areas.

Description: A THESIS SUBMITTED TO SCHOOL OF GRADUATE STUDIES OF ADDIS ABABA UNIVERSITY IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTERS OF SCIENCE IN HEALTH INFORMATICS.

A WEB-BASED NATIONAL DATA CENTER FRAMEWORK TO INTEGRATE HEALTH RELATED PUBLICATIONS IN ETHIOPIA

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 07:57:09 GMT

Title: A WEB-BASED NATIONAL DATA CENTER FRAMEWORK TO INTEGRATE HEALTH RELATED PUBLICATIONS IN ETHIOPIA

Authors: -Birhan, Atnafu

Abstract: Background—Managing and integration health information has been possible and improved through different technologies such as web-based systems and computer applications. The objective of this study is to search for a solution to integrate health related publications from various nationwide hospitals and health associations and institutes using a central web-based national data center for publications to mobilize the new fragmented, but interrelated health publications. Methods— There are many hospitals, health associations and institutes throughout Ethiopia; but the activities in these institutes within health care delivery and management are almost similar. Therefore, variables and definitions for activities are almost identical for the proposed Web-based National Data Center application. For this reason, only limited numbers of health institutes are taken from Addis Ababa for data gathering using purposive and stratified sampling methods. Data were collected and analyzed to obtain representative input requirements to design the new system. Based on the results of the analysis, common services, practices, information technology usage, locally available and international health websites and publications were identified; methods for data security are assessed, interpreted and devised.. Results — This is the first web-based national data center proposed to integrate health related publications from local and foreign sources in Ethiopian context. The health sector is vast and broad that encompasses different resources. In this thesis, based on the results of the requirements analysis, the web-based national data center for health related publications system is proposed as a solution for integration of health related publications. Only one of the segments of the health resources, publication, is addressed using webbased application. Even though there are many services which can be done in the same area yet, the researcher believes that this application may serve as a pilot to design and implement a full-fledged system. Therefore, this application is open, flexible and amendable for any change which is found to be essential.

Description: A thesis Submitted to the School of Graduate Studies Addis Ababa University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirement for the Degree of Master of Science in Health Informatics

ASSESSMENT OF HMIS DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION IN ETHIOPIA: THE CASE OF SELCTED PUBLIC HEALTH FACILITIES IN ADDIS ABABA HEALTH BUREAU

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 09:56:14 GMT

Title: ASSESSMENT OF HMIS DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION IN ETHIOPIA: THE CASE OF SELCTED PUBLIC HEALTH FACILITIES IN ADDIS ABABA HEALTH BUREAU

Authors: MESSAY, KITANBO

Abstract: Background: To facilitate informed local decision-making it is necessary to implement health management information system to timely and accurately provide each level of the health sector with the necessary information. In the interests of improving health sectors, the Ethiopian government has engaged in the sector reform, including a process of decentralizing decision-making and budgetary power to the district levels. Objectives: The purpose of this study was to assess HMIS Design and Implementation in selected Public Health facilities of Addis Ababa Health Bureau, Ethiopia. The study attempted to determine the status of HMIS implementation and the use of HMIS generated information for health care delivery planning and decision making at different level of the health sector. Methodology: In this study, a cross-sectional study was conducted at Addis Ababa, Ethiopia from December to June 2012. Both qualitative and quantitative research methods were used. The sample size of the study was 258. Data was collected through open and closed-ended questionnaires, observation and analysis of certain documents, also secondary data from selected reports of facilities obtained from Addis Ababa health bureau was used. SPSS version16 software was used to analyze quantitative data. Correlation was used as a statistical method to identify the association between selected variables and quality of HMIS data, Pearson’s correlation coefficient with two tailed test of significance was used to determine the strength of association. Results: The general implementation of HMIS in the study area covered all (100%) of health facilities and administrative units. Availability of adequate HMIS unit staff at health facilities was not up to the need of health facilities. The use of HMIS generated information for health care delivery planning and decision making in the study area was found to be 78%. The major identified problems related with the design of the current system used for HMIS were; Prevention Mother To Child Transmission (PMTCT) and Volunteer Counseling and Testing (VCT) for 1 to 4 age was not included, the analysis part of the existing system doesn’t include further statistical analysis it only show charts, blank space for unregistered diseases was not XVI available, the recently included HMIS indicators for some disease were not included, and problem of registration by the professionals due to inconveniency of the HMIS formats. The study also identified the major problems of the current HMIS data collection and reporting tools. It was found that data collection tools at Outpatient Department (OPD) and Antiretroviral Therapy (ART) were not quite adequate, work burden on the professionals due to most of the tools had similar attributes, data collection using tally sheets was not suitable for professionals, and the line spacing of data collection tools was not suitable were reported as the major problems of the existing HMIS data collection and reporting tools. Knowledge of HMIS concept, frequency of training and accountability of concerned bodies has a statistically significant association with quality of HMIS data. The finding of the study also identified that duration of supervision and availability of HMIS focal person did not have a statistically significant association with quality of HMIS data. Conclusions: The study concludes that; health facilities need to be furnished with adequate HMIS resources, and qualified human resources required at HMIS unit. The design of the existing system used for HMIS and the data collection tools needs to be modified and customized to support the needs of the professionals by incorporating the problems identified by this research. Duration of supervision, followed by availability of HMIS focal person, did not result into a significant improvement of the quality of HMIS data, thus guideline for capacity building program of the staff have to be developed by following the strength of association identified by this and other related studies with quality of HMIS data.

Description: A THESIS SUBMITTED TO GRADUATE STUDIES IN ADDIS ABABA UNIVERSITY IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENT FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTERS IN HEALTH INFORMATICS