A GREEN COMPUTING MODEL FOR OUTPATIENT MEDICATION PROCESSES

Abstract

Health is the most critical issue in human life. It has been observed that different paradigms like ―computerization‖, ―automation‖, and ―re-engineering of service process automation‖ have been taken place in across the world in these medical institutions. The developing country‘s medical institutions like Ethiopia are still falling into either computerization phase or automation phase. In this context one of the most important challenges and issue addressed in this research is ―unified automation with reduced duplication of efforts in automated systems through green aspects consideration in computing and communication‖. In Ethiopian context the use of computerized, semi-automated or manual systems challenge in terms of patient‘s safety, service timeliness, accuracy, redundancy, resource utilization efficiency and greenness in the computing and communication processes. Primarily this research aimed at analyzing the existing system (computerized, semi-automated and paper-based) patient information computing & communication system with respect to aforementioned process parameters. Afterwards analysis of the fact finding, the research designed an efficient and unified green automated system model named ―Unified Green Patient Information Computing and Communication System (Green PICCS)‖. In order to ensure the functional validation of the research a prototype for the designed model i.e. Green PICCS was developed and implemented. The study concluded that Green PICCS can be used as new knowledge based generalized model for Ethiopian Health care institutions to transform their current state of art computing and communication processes to the next generation green computing and communication process systems. The research study used two modes of fact-findings i.e. personal observation and stakeholder‘s interview for collecting the facts about efficiency and green requirements of PICCS. Here outpatient documents were also reviewed to know annual facts about outpatients visited and amount of paper annually consumed. Pre-implementation evaluation of existing system was performed using a web-based questionnaire of 30 evidences. Based on the collected facts and analysis; a Green PICCS Model was designed and later developed as a prototype for functional demonstration and validation. The Intel Application Energy Toolkit was used to collect power consumption data in Green PICCS Model. Post-implementation evaluation of Green PICCS Model‘s Prototype was then performed using the same tool. Finally, a comparative analysis was done for existing computerized, semi-automated and paper-based system vs. Green PICCS Model based system Prototype. In order to achieve the greenness of the Green PICCS computational efficiency, data efficiency, context awareness, idle efficiency determinants were considered and recommended for including in design and development process. The analysis was conducted at outpatient department of Karat District Hospital as a case for primary data collection and functional demonstration of research outcomes. The findings of the research result reveals that Green PICCS Model has found better safety (5.97% vs. 84.67% unsafe), better timeliness (3.90% vs. 88.54% not quick), better resource efficiency (5.40% vs. 85.15% inefficient), better accuracy (2.70% vs. 85.30% inaccurate), better data redundancy (5.40% vs. 90.55% data redundant) and better greenness (17.13% paper consumption and 13.64% power consumption of the existing systems consumption was reduced). Based on the results of the study, it was concluded that Unified Green PICCS Model can be a New and Next Gen Green Model for greener service provisions with efficient computing and communications services in health care institutions in developing countries like Ethiopia.