Developing Knowledge Based System For Premedical Triage Using Fuzzy Inference Rule Based Approach: The Case Of Menelik Ii Hospital

No Thumbnail Available

Date

2016-01-17

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

Addis Ababa University

Abstract

Hospitals and other health centers are organized to help patients because; human health problem is a serious issue in day to day life. Since the aim of health organizations is to make people to be productive and healthy, the services that are given by the health centers should be fast and efficient enough. But there are some gaps observed in the health centers like, low patient handling capacity of the hospitals, low skill of the triage staff because of lack of experience, lack of good judgment quality, less tolerance of the patients, lack of enough knowledge etc. In the case of Ethiopia different problems are observed in health care centers. From different perspectives, one is the problems observed in the triage system. So the objective of this research is developing knowledge based system for premedical triage using fuzzy inference rule based approach. Interview and document review have been used as a data collection methods. The researcher has interviewed the domain experts by using unstructured interview, because unstructured interview is used to get unlimited idea from the domain experts. In order to develop the system, fuzzy inference logic has been used as a tool. Fuzzy logic is a precise problem solving methodology which is able to simultaneously handle numerical data and linguistic knowledge. In fuzzy logic, a statement can assume any real value between 0 and 1, representing the degree to which an element belongs to a given set. Hierarchical tree have been used in order to represent the knowledge that are collected from the domain experts. The hierarchical tree diagram provides the analysts with an effective visual condensation of the clustering results. The hierarchical tree diagram is one of the most commonly used methods of determining the number of clusters in this case number of selected diseases. The numbers at the top and bottom of the hierarchical tree diagram represent equally spaced values of the criterion function. It gives a pictorial representation of the criterion function information. Finally the researcher has tried to develop the system using fuzzy inference system, and the user acceptance of the system is evaluated by the domain experts. The system gives a significance contribution for the domain area because the domain experts rated the user acceptance test of the system as 74.28%. This is because the since the symptoms of the patients are subjective, it is difficult for fuzzification. In addition to that there is no universal agreement on fuzzifing the symptoms. The developed system can be able to identify the diseases based on the query given by the user. The user in this case the triage nurse gives each fuzzified values of the symptoms, and then the system recommended the possible result in ranking by using percentage. The system can be able to provide suggestions on the basis of symptoms what will be the recommended disease and to where further diagnosis will be.

Description

Keywords

Premedical Triage Using Fuzzy Inference Rule Based Approach

Citation