| dc.description.abstract | Health issues in developing countries are becoming more serious day by day, as different
diseases attack and infect people making the public health sector overwhelmed. This has made it difficult
for health workers to accurately study the trend of different diseases in many cases, thus failing to
analyze the way patients behave after being diagnosed. The number of people who possess mobile
phones is increasing every year and this can help facilitate communication in different geographical
locations that may hinder movement of the health workers. The initiative to introduce the use of
interactive messaging system is for patients who wish to access health services such as doctoral
appointments and consultations or need monitoring but are faced by challenges like; the time needed to
make for appointments and consultations, patients monitoring and halving to travel for long distances to
reach the facility.
Therefore the researcher designed and prototyped a mobile interactive messaging system that
would enable patients to send their preliminary symptoms to the health workers in Kenyan public
hospitals via SMS through mobile phones. With regard to the wide spread usage of mobile telephony
today, the researcher chose to use the technology since she anticipated it would reach a large
population. An interactive messaging system for patients’ collaboration with health workers is a system
that uses mobile phone technology that enables communication between patients and health workers.
This system’ will serve both the new and continuing patients. The health workers will monitor the
progress of continuing patients, while the new patients send their preliminary symptoms to the health
workers via SMS. All this information is stored in database residing at the health facility, which will serve
as a reference point to the health workers as they respond to the messages received and patients will be
able to effectively collaborate with the health workers without necessarily having to visit health facility. | en_US |
