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A smartphone based application to improve the health care system of

Bangladesh

Conference Paper · December 2016

DOI: 10.1109/MEDITEC.2016.7835358

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Ahmed Imteaj Md. Kamrul Hossain

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 A Smartphone based Application to Improve the
Health Care System of Bangladesh
Ahmed Imteaj and Muhammad Kamrul Hossain
Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Chittagong University of Engineering & Technology
Chittagong, Bangladesh.
Email: imtu_1992@yahoo.com, muhammadkamrulhossain@gmail.com
Abstract— Nowadays, smartphones have reached every hand • Information about facilities of hospitals and their
and every home. As a result, people are making use of the locations.
beneficial mobile applications to make their everyday life easier.
• Information about the doctor’s chamber in a city, a
This paper focuses on development of a mobile application(app)
to help providing an effective health care system. Using this app
way to make an appointment with the doctor
people can get numerous benefits like finding hospital • Assistance to the user to make an emergency call for
information in the city, information about cabin, cabin booking an ambulance or health care service
with payment, intelligent suggestion on choosing suitable • Alert system to take medicines in a fixed time. The
hospital, finding a doctor, emergency service calling, first aid application will alert the user for taking medicine in
informatin, alarm system for medication, Body Mass Index(BMI) proper time.
calculator etc. This application will be a helping hand for people • Body Mass Index (BMI) calculator.
who find it difficult to select hospital, book cabin, contacting
We discussed about some relevant papers in Section II. In
doctor for appointment or seeking help in emergency situation.
Besides, it will help the masses in their everyday life by providing
Section III we described the system functionality with
health care information, aid and medication information, technical details. We showed a survey summary focusing the
medicine reminder system, etc. necessity of our implemented healthcare system in Section IV.
Section V contains some challenges and scopes for future
Keywords—Health care; Emergency situation; Cabin booking; development of our work and finally, we conclude the paper.
Doctor’s appointment; Mobile application; Android.
II. LITERATURE REVIEWS
I. INTRODUCTION There are several applications in the market that offer
Health care is a basic need of every human being. In tracking system and anti-theft applications. Recently anti-theft
Bangladesh the health care system is mainly provided by the applications have earned voluminous attention from the
government with little or no charge. But this comes with many researcher and developers, where different types of features
complications. The huge number of patients makes it difficult are offered.
for the government hospitals to provide them with a quality The author in [2] proposed a mobile application which
health care. As a result, thousands of private hospitals are enables patients to manage their vital statistics information
established with a view to meet the growing need of the and transmit the medical information to health care providers.
masses for a quality health care. But when one wish to take But there is no cabin booking feature, or hospital’s statistical
service from a hospital, he first tries to collect some information for the user.
information about that hospital. This information is not only
hard to find but also difficult to understand in some cases. A mobile application based system in propounded in [3] to
Especially when people from rural areas come to urban areas assist doctors in monitoring Alzheimer’s patient medication
for better health care service, they find it very difficult to give an alarm to the patient to consume the medicine. But this
choose a suitable hospital. Besides, when comparing a number application only developed for Alzheimer’s patient.
of hospitals for finding better alternatives, it poses some
Another mobile application of personal health care
complexities. The cost and quality for various services in a
system for patients with diabetes is presented in [4]. But the
hospital can be used as a metric for comparison with other
limitation of this work is that it can only push the blood
hospitals which is not always possible.
glucose level to the Google sheet to receive services and
In this paper, a mobile application to make health care cannot attain services from a particular doctor.
more convenient for the masses is proposed. The reason for
A web-based tele healthcare system proposed in [5] which
choosing android platform is that in Bangladesh, the cost of
was integrated with the mobile application for diet people. In
android phone is reasonable and even poor people can afford
order to comprehensively deal with the over-weight problem,
to have one. Besides, android phones are seen widespread and
the user interface with four important aspects on weight, diet,
all ages and class of people are using it without hassle.
exercise and sleep records is implemented. In addition, online
The application will provide: courses and knowledge of diet are provided in the system.
• Online cabin booking system An integrated recommender framework for seeking
• Intelligent suggestion of hospitals based on cost and doctors in accordance with the patient’s demand
quality characteristics, including their illness symptoms and their

978-1-5090-5421-3/16/$31.00 ©2016 IEEE

preference is put forth in [6]. In the proposed method, a user’s hospital information section, cabin booking in hospital section,
matching model is firstly suggested for finding the similarities section for appointment making with doctor, section for
between users’ consultation and doctors’ profiles. Second, to emergency health care, section for aid and medication
measure doctor’s quality, doctor’s experiences and dynamic information, BMI index calculation section, medicine
user’s opinions are considered. reminder section and hospital suggestion section.
A WAP-based telemedicine system described in [7] for
patient-monitoring. It utilizes WAP devices as mobile access
terminals for general inquiry and patient-monitoring services.
The authors in [8] provided various useful tools to the
hospital’s users such as personnel and structures finding,
wayfinding and the possibility to access personal medical
records collected on regional electronic health record.
In [9], the authors developed and tested the Berkeley
Tricorder, a health monitoring device capable of measuring a
subject’s ECG, EMG, Blood Oxygenation, Respiration (via
Bio-impedance), and motion.
Another electronic patient management system has been
considered in [10]. They propounded a system which locates
nearest available hospital, contacts its ambulance emergency
system, accesses an Electronic Health Record of emergency
patient that can critically assist in pre-hospital treatments. The
system will identify the availability of the nearest available
specialized hospital all through the EMS server, which
provides continuous information about the incoming patient to
the hospital.
A prototype of a wireless health monitoring system
capable of sending SMS related to the health status of the
patient is developed in [11]. The project can be divided into
three stages of data acquisition, data processing and
communication stages. The authors in [12] showed a web
based system to book a train ticket in advance. But the system
is less user friendly and not flexible to use. Fig. 1: System architecture
Our main motivation is to develop a system integrated with The admin section provides an easy way to create and
a lot of features through which people would tackle different update the hospital and cabin booking information. An
hard situation during disruption of health condition by saving administrator will be given a password to login to admin
time. For example, intelligent suggestion of hospitals, online section. After successful login, admin can update hospital
cabin booking facility, allocate an appointment with a doctor, information such as list of specialist doctors, number of cabin,
prescription displayer, medicine course reminder, emergency amount of charge for service, facilities provided by a hospital,
auto-call making to predefined important numbers, etc. information about Operation Theater etc. Furthermore, an
features would help the user to make a quick decision and admin can see who booked cabin with payment information.
avoid unexpected situations. These features were not Admin will use the payment information to verify the identity
combinedly done in any previous works. of the one who booked cabin.
III. IMPLEMENTATION OF OUR SYSTEM The cabin booking feature is one of the novel features of
this application. Any user can find a suitable hospital and
A. System Architecture request for a cabin. If available the user can book it in advance
The system consists of two major modules. One for by paying a specified fee. The fees and number of cabins
administrators and one for the general users. The administrator available are updated by the hospital authority through this
section is for creating and updating information about application. The user must provide his credentials when
hospitals and cabins. And the other section provides several confirming a cabin booking. For example, we used bKash as
prominent features for the general users that will enable them payment method. After paying the required fees, the user gets
to get quick and effective health care. The app can be used a transaction message form the bKash system. This message
offline, but it needs internet for updating and synchronization. has a unique transaction ID. This ID, along with phone
The system architecture is visualized in Fig. 1 and the logic number from which the payment was made, is uploaded to the
diagram of cabin booking is shown in Fig. 2. server via this application by the user. The authority can
B. Mobile Application anytime check and validate the patient’s claim for a seat book
The application is developed in android OS. The startup by checking these information uploaded by the user. The
page offers users a list of features. It has administrator section, system logic diagram is shown in Fig 2.
 Start

Login

User Hospital authority

Cabin booking View Update

section Database Database

(a) (b)
Select a hospital Fig. 3: Displaying details information with number of available cabins of a
hospital

No Have
Yes Update
internet?

Load stored Load info. Server

info. from server Retrieved
Info.

Show hospital info.

No Save
Book
cabin?
(a) (b)
Fig. 4. (a) User input form for transaction (b) Displaying details information
Yes of a payee to authority

Select AC/ Show cabin info. Open bKash

Non AC with payment Menu

Transaction
No
Complete?

Yes

Input
Transaction info.
(a) (b) (c)
Fig. 5: (a) Choice options (b) List of hospitals according to quality (c) List of
hospitals according to cost
Submit all
In this application there is a unique feature called hospital
suggestion. Here a comprehensive suggestion of hospitals can
No be obtained. It presents two categories of suggestion to the
Valid user. First is quality based, and second is cost based. The first
Input? option sorts the hospitals by the facilities they provide for
example, the number of full time doctors, number of specialist
Yes
doctors, number of operation theaters, number of cabins and
user rating from online sites, such as google.com. In case of
Fig. 2: Logic diagram of online cabin booking system
cost based suggestion, the application sorts the hospital based There is an option for the users to save their prescriptions
on their cabin fee per day. This is demonstrated in Fig 5. provided by doctors. They can save in text format or can take
photo and save them. This will help people keep record of
To help find hospital location, the app provides an option their past illness and medication. Besides, it will prevent the
for getting hospital location. Users can easily find location of prescription from being lost. (Fig. 7, 8).
hospital with a single tap. The system will open up the google
map application and mark the hospital’s location. (Fig. 6). In case of emergency when an ambulance or doctor is not
at hand, this application can help by providing quick links for
calling a doctor or an ambulance. There is an option for
emergency calling in this app which takes just a tap to make a
call to the desires service as shown in Fig. 9.
Moreover, using this application a user can find his body
mass index (BMI) which is an indicator for obesity which is
shown in (Fig. 10).

Fig. 6. Showing hospital location on the map

There is a prominent feature in this application for
informing users of the available facilities of a hospital. By
going through this section, a user will be able to know the
details of a hospital, such as its doctors, its facilities, its cost
for services etc.
The system also offers the users with a novel option to
make an appointment with a doctor of his locality. A user can (a) (b)
Fig. 8:(a) List of prescriptions (b) A prescription showing prescribed medicine
search for a doctor by mentioning his urgency. After finding a along with image
doctor, he can make an appointment with the doctor. The
application will provide him the location of the chamber of the
doctor.

(a) (b)
Fig. 7: (a) Details of a doctor and (b) setting an appointment Fig. 9: Emergency calling section
 IV. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS C. Survey Results
After implementing the application, we did a survey of 150
A. Experimental Data different level of users to attain their opinion in online and
We have collected data from ten renowned hospitals of offline. We asked them several questions about problems they
Chittagong city. To provide the user about the correct are facing and possible best solution according to their
information of those hospitals, we went there and retrieve opinion. We recorded each of the answers, analyzed them and
different information for the benefit of the users. We asked proclaimed our desired result. The list of questions is accorded
them about the information by which user can make a decision in table 2 and user response is graphically shown in Fig. 11.
before choosing a hospital. That means, the application
contains the data by which user can understand whether a Question 1: Do you think the problems would be diminished
hospital cabin is available or it is according to his budget, through the application?
class, etc. or not. Using the information, we have given the Question 2: Do you wish to have online cabin booking and
user intelligent suggestion based on- quality and cost. We payment system?
have considered the following criteria as input: Name of the Question 3: What do you think about the usefulness of the
hospital, Total cabin, bKash number, Unique password, application?
Number of doctor, Number of specialist doctor, Operation TABLE II. A LIST OF SURVEY QUESTIONS WITH OPTIONS
theater, Cabin fee per day and Location.
Questions Options
B. Measurement of Quality
We have rated each input out of 10 except map rating Emergency Lack of Unawareness Forget to
Situation but knowledge about health take
point. The Google map rating is rated out of 5. If the number
Question 1 no Available about related issues medicine
of cabin, doctor and specialist doctor of a hospital is 100 or cabin(a) hospitals (b) (c) (d)
above, then they rated as 10 out of 10 in the input of their
individual plot. We have used the following approach to
68% 12% 3% 17%
generate the total rating point of different hospitals. Percentage
of total
If No. of cabin, Doctor, specialist doctor >= 100
Then point = 10;
Else point= No. of cabin, doctor, specialist doctor/ 10;
If OT >= 10 then point (OT) =10;
Else point (OT) = OT;
Total point= Point (Cabin) + Point (No. of Doctor) + Point
Question 2 Yes (a) No (b) May be (c) Not sure
(Specialist Doctor) + Point (OT) + Map Rating Point (d)

TABLE I. MEASUREMENT OF QUALITY 85% 5% 7% 3%

Percentage
of total
Name Total No. of Special OT, Map Total
Cabin, Doctor, ist Point Rating points
Point Point Doctor, point
Point
CSCR 100, 10 58, 5.8 50, 5 5, 5 3.9 29.7
Very Helpful (b) Need Not sure
National 43, 4.3 45, 4.5 47, 4.7 4, 4 3.5 21 Question 3 useful (a) improvement (d)
Hospital (c)
Metropoli 130, 10 90, 9 55, 5.5 6, 6 3.3 33.8
tan 68% 20% 7% 5%
Hospital Percentage
Holy 90, 9 45, 4.5 38, 3.8 5, 5 4.3 26.6 of total
Crescent
Hospital
Ma-O- 70, 7 144, 10 19, 1.9 5, 5 4.7 28.6
Shishu
Hospital
Halisahar 26. 2.6 42, 4.2 13, 1.3 2, 2 2.5 12.6
General After contriving our system, we have craved to perceive
Hospital user feedback and their persuasion. We have accumulated
South 25, 2.5 35, 3.5 15, 1.5 3, 3 2.8 13.3 feedback from different male and female. We appraised them
Point
Hospital
to rate this application, whether it is useful or not. 68% users
Midpoint 35, 3.5 32, 3.2 18, 1.8 3, 3 3.1 14.6 rated this application as very useful. They suggested that this
Hospital will be a prodigious opportunity to enunciate on community
Ekushey 38, 3.8 26, 2.6 8, 0.8 3, 3 1.3 11.5 problems without any trouble. We have exhibited the feedback
Hospital of the users regarding our system in graphically in Fig. 12.
 90

80 a quick and effective way to reach the solution with the help
70
of this app. In future, we hope to work extensively on this to
develop it to a new level for the betterment of people,
60 especially the poor. We are also looking forward to use
50 artificial intelligence in helping people detecting disease based
Question (a) on symptoms. This way, it is hoped that mobile based health
40
Question (b) care system will be a useful part and parcel of everyday life.
30
Question (c)
20
REFERENCES
10
[1] bKash- a BRAC BANK company
0 [www.bKash.com]
Option (a) Option(b) Option (c) Option (d) [2] A.Carpio, J. Kim, R. Hoda, “MedTouch: Towards the Development of
Smartphone-based Software Solutions for Mobile Health Care,” in
Fig. 11. User response to survey questions Proceedings of Australasian Software Engineering Conference, 4-7 June
2013.
[3] Z. A. Habash, W. Hussain, W. Ishak, and M. H. Omar, “Android-Based
Application to Assist Doctor with Alzheimer’s Patient,” International
Very Useful
80 Conference on Computing and Informatics (ICOCI), 28-30 August,
2013.
60 [4] F.Zhou, “Mobile personal health care system for patients with diabetes,”
Graduate Theses and Dissertations, 2011.
40
[5] H.P.Chen, W.H. Chen, X.Y. Su, Y.J. Chen, K.C. Huang, “A Web-
20 Based Telehealthcare System with Mobile Application and Data
Analysis for Diet People,” in Proceedings of 15th International
Not sure 0 Helpful
Conference on e-Health Networking, Applications and Services, 2013.
[6] H.Jiang, W. Xu, “How to find your appropriate doctor,” in Proceedings
of Computational Intelligence in Healthcare and e-health (CICARE), pp.
154-158, 9-12 Dec. 2014.
[7] K. Hung, Y.T. Zhang, “Implementation of a WAP-Based Telemedicine
System for Patient Monitoring,” IEEE Transactions On Information
Need
Technology In Biomedicine, vol. 7, no. 2, June 2003.
Improvement Percentage [8] A. Luschi, A. Belardinelli, L. Marzi, F. Frosini, R. Miniati, E. Iadanza,
of user “Careggi Smart Hospital: a mobile app for patients, citizens and
Healthcare stuff,” in Proceedings of International Conference on
Biomedical and Health Informatics (BHI), pp. 125-128, 1-4 June, 2014.
Fig. 12. User opinions about our system
[9] R.A.Nimbalkar, R.A. Fadnavis, “Domain Specific Search Of Nearest
Hospital And Healthcare Management System,” in Proceedings of
V. CONCLUSION Recent Advances in Engineering and Computational Sciences
In this age of science and technology people are getting (RACECS), pp. 1-5, 06-08 March,2014.
easier and convenient ways to solve their everyday problems. [10] B. Priya, S. Rajendran, R. Bala and Gobbi. R, “Remote Wireless Health
The health care is also getting attention of the scientist and Monitoring Systems,” in Proceedings of Conference on Innovative
Technologies in Intelligent Systems and Industrial Applications
researchers, and they are developing a helpful system to save (CITISIA), 2009.
life and care for life. This paper demonstrates a mobile [11] B.Sekar, J. B. Liu, “Location Based Mobile Apps Development On
application based health care tool that can be a friend like Android Platform,” in Proceedings of 9th Conference on Industrial
company for the masses. Using the app they can find many Electronics and Applications (ICIEA), 2014.
conveniences that can change the way people react in [12] C.Song, W.WU, “Petri Net Modeling of Information Flow in the Online
emergency situations. Instead of being panic, people may find Train Ticket Booking System,” in Proceeding of International
Conference on Automation and Logistics, China, August 2012.

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