1. CHAPTER ONE
1.0 INTRODUCTION
Medicine like many other professions today is faced with major problem of
information management and resource sharing, in that reason the essence of writing on
this particular topic cannot be over emphasized. This is more so as the visits patients
take to the hospitals require the need to keep records of their health statistics, in such a
manner that they can be easily retrieved and updated in a concurrent and simultaneous
manner, while health personnel who need to update these statistics could also do so
easily via any workstation in the hospital.
In developed societies, hospitals especially laboratories are equipped with
computers to process patients samples and return the results to the operator (the
Medical laboratory scientist). In such laboratories, details of previous visits by a patient
such as attending doctors, laboratory attendants, nature of ailments etc are easily made
available and help in a comprehensive medical record of the patients.
A comprehensive web-based system is the principal ingredient of a specialized
Hospital Management System. It must possess all the ingredients of a centralized
system with addition to procedures and processes that allow for simultaneous access to
data at various points (nodes). Nigerians today have become also pre occupied with
health and fitness that getting and staying healthy are quick becoming most of the
greatest of all Nigerian pastimes. Being fit is now in vogue. There are many weekly and
monthly health and fitness magazines, and currently diet and exercise books have
consistently been among the “top ten” on non-fiction best-seller lists. Health and
fitness-club memberships have soared and a 24-hour cable Television health network
now offers comprehensive medical, scientific and self-care information. All these
activities are facilitated by the programmable electronic device i.e. computer.
There are several thousands of areas the computer is applicable and new applications
are being developed almost every day.
This project highlights the role of computer in hospitals using a Web-basedSystem for
easy accessibility of patient’s medical record, and for easy diagnoses and treatment of

2. ailments, easy referencing to patients past medical records, for management decision
making. Consequently this is the foundation on which this project is mainly focused.
1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
Application of computers to process medical problems is found throughout the
World of medicine. This ranges from medical research via Clinical application to health
sciences.
Many governments have promoted the use of computers in medical
instrumentation. A medical research stresses computer technology in several ways and
has recorded significant developing in areas like medical statistics, simulation, data-
medical records.
computer bases information system is installed in offices to previously done
using the manual method of data a time like this when the government is putting all
resources towards attaining improved standard of living for its citizen’s, the application
of computers will aid in discharging efficient and improved medical services to the
people. In developed countries, which have long absorbed Computerization, their
health sector has continued to flourish while medical services are still poor in
developing countries. Patients do not have adequate care. This causes careless deaths in
most cases and has drastically reduced the overall life expectancy of the average citizen.
One reason is that the doctors being human cannot work beyond the limit of their
abilities, and therefore sometimes make very careless errors of judgment under
pressure.
It is therefore the aim of this project work to introduce the “Application of
computers in Hospital Administration” and at the same time bringing into limelight the
numerous benefits associated with the use of computers to improve the health sector at
least towards ensuring that our dream of health for all in future to come is realized.

3. 1.2 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
After careful investigation of the current method of rendering medical and allied
services to the patients at the First Rivers Hospital following problems were discovered:
1) Non-integration of all parties involved in service delivery.
2) Delays in attending to patients.
3) In-accurate record keeping.
4) Information redundancy.
1.3 OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY
The objective of this project work is to design an efficient web-based system for
the advancement of medical research and analysis, which will make it easy to follow up
a patient’s medical record from any workstation in the hospital. This will thus replace
the method of one point of entry and retrieval that exist in non-web-based systems. The
work will also help in speeding up the processing, storing and retrieval of information,
which will greatly assist medical personnel in the performing their duties.
It will also help to improve decision making by reducing processing time as well
as reducing the communication gap between the doctor and other staff still involved in
the patient medical care. It will also help to reduce human errors to the barest minimum
and improving confidentiality of file.
1.4 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY
In the area of health delivery, Hospitals can benefit a lot from the use and
supportive roles that web-based systems will enhance.
• Stock inventory management/administration.
• Patient’s administration.
• Drug administration.
• Staff administration/management.

4. As a result, when all these are established they will in turn provide crucial information
for proper management of the system.
1.5 SCOPE AND LIMITATION OF THE STUDY
As a result of resource limitations in both time and money, this study is based on
patients management, secure access of users and hierarchy of information and
integration of all users into the health care delivery process.
1.6 LIMITATION
A lot of setbacks were encountered in course of this project. There were constraints in
many areas like:
i) FINANCE: The high cost of materials for the project and the everyday constraint
increase in transportation tax during data collection affected the research work.
ii) DATA COLLECTION: The research work had a problem in collecting data from staff.
However, I still remain indebted to the staff who generously contributed immensely
making this project successful.
iii) MATERIAL: Material constrains play a major role in that limiting some research
that would have contributed immensely.
1.7 DEFINITION OF TECHNICAL TERMS
Some vital terms used for the purpose of carrying out this research are as follows:
ONLINE: Online is the condition of being connected to a network of computers or other
devices
REALTIME: Real time is a level of computer responsiveness that a user senses as
sufficiently immediate or that enables the computer to keep up with some external
process (for example, to present visualizations of the weather as it constantly changes).
Real-time is an adjective pertaining to computers or processes that operate in real time.
Real time describes a human rather than a machine sense of time.
AUTHENTICATION: is the act of confirming the truth of an attribute of a datum or

5. entity. This might involve confirming the identity of a person or software program,
tracing the origins of an artifact, or ensuring that a product is what itspackaging and
labeling claims to be.
VALIDATION: verification and validation (V&V) is the process of checking that a
software system meets specifications and that it fulfills its intended purpose. It may also
be referred to as software quality control
COMPUTER: This is the foremost and important term needed to carry out this
research. It is an electronic device which operates by taking some raw materials in form
of data and converting them into some useful results.
NICE (Network Independent Communication Environment): a library providing a
standard API allowing different modules to interwork according to a client-server
approach, regardless of their mutual location over the network.
ACT MANAGER: provides a unified support for the definition of protocols and for the
functional interworking of different units, in terms of request and delivery of services.
COMMUNICATION: a way of provides a gateway for the interaction of the various
components with external applications, through different types of protocols.
AUTHORISATIONS: provides a unified support to the definition authorizations and
rights of the individual users, according to legal and organizational requirements.
PATIENT MANAGER: a person who provides a unified repository for storing
summary personal and epidemiological information on the patient.
INPUT: This means collecting and entering data into a computer system.
OUTPUT: This means getting some useful information out of the computer.
DATA: This comprises of raw facts and figures that are processed into information.
INFORMATION: Output from a system; this has been processed to give it meaning.
PROGRAMMING: This is a detailed set of instructions for the computer to respond
and implement. In essence it is a way of telling the computer what to do, how to do it
and when to do it.

6. COMPUTERIZATION: This is the application of computer on different areas of human
life.
INTERFACE: The circuitry which connects the CPU (Central Processing Unit) to its
peripherals.
PASSWORD: These are a set of character which may be allocated to a person, a
terminal or a facility which is required to be keyed into the system before further access
is permitted.
OPERATING SYSTEM: Programs which control the resources off a computer and
provide a link between hardware and software.
ROM: Read Only Memory.
RAM: Random Access Memory.
ALGORITHM: This is a formula, series of steps, or well defined set of rules for solving
a problem.
FIELD: A column data on a database or a group of characters which represents a single
data item.
RECORD: A group of related field.
ENTITY: These are the most important elements about which a record is kept.
ATTRIBUTES: This is a property of an entity of a relationship type.
PRIMARY KEY: This is the most important attribute of an entity that uniquely
identifies the entity.
FOREIGN KEY: This is always. Responsible for the relationship between entities. The
foreign key in a particular entity is the primary key in particular entity.
DATABASE: This is a collection of structural data. The structure of the data is
independent of any particular application.
DDBMS: This is an acronym for Database Management System, it is the name given to
the software that builds, manages and provides access to a database.

7. CHAPTER TWO
2.0 LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1 INTRODUCTION
A Web-based system consists of a collection of autonomouscomputers, connected
through a network and distributionmiddleware, which enables computers to coordinate
theiractivities and to share the resources of the system, so that users perceive the system
as a single, integrated computing facility. It can also be simply defined as a collection of
independent computers that appears to its users as a single coherent system
(JussiKangasharju2008).
2.2 CHARACTERISTICS OF A WEB-BASED SYSTEM
Multiple autonomous components
Components are not shared by all users
Resources may not be accessible
Software runs in concurrent processes on different processors
Multiple Points of control
Multiple Points of failure
Examples of Web-based Systems
Fig 10: Local Intranet as an example of a Web-based system

8. Goals
Making resources accessible
Distribution transparency
Openness
Scalability
Security
System design requirements
Challenges for Making Resources Accessible
Naming
Access control
Security
Availability
Performance
Mutual exclusion of users, fairness
Consistency in some cases
2.4 THE MODEL FOR WEB-BASED SYSTEMS
Traditionally, having a monolithic system run across multiple computers meant
splitting the system into separate client and server components. In such systems, the
client component handled the user interface and the server provided back-end
processing, such as database access, printing, and so on. As computers proliferated,
dropped in cost, and became connected by ever-higher bandwidth networks, splitting
software systems into multiple components became more convenient, with each
component running on a different computer and performing a specialized function.
This approach simplified development, management, administration, and often
improved performance and robustness, since failure in one computer did not
necessarily disable the entire system (eHow, 2010).

9. In many cases the system appears to the client as an opaque cloud that performs the
necessary operations, even though the Web-based system is composed of individual
nodes, as illustrated in the following figure.
The opacity of the cloud is maintained because computing operations are invoked on
behalf of the client. As such, clients can locate a computer (a node) within the cloud and
request a given operation; in performing the operation, that computer can invoke
functionality on other computers within the cloud without exposing the additional
steps, or the computer on which they were carried out, to the client.
With this paradigm, the mechanics of a Web-based, cloud-like system can be broken
down into many individual packet exchanges, or conversations between individual
nodes.
Traditional client-server systems have two nodes with fixed roles and responsibilities.
Modern-Web-based systems can have more than two nodes, and their roles are often
dynamic. In one conversation a node can be a client, while in another conversation the
node can be the server. In many cases, the ultimate consumer of the exposed
functionality is a client with a user sitting at a keyboard, watching the output. In other
cases the Web-based system functions unattended, performing background operations.
The Web-based system may not have dedicated clients and servers for each particular
packet exchange, but it is important to remember there is a caller, (or initiator, either of
which is often referred to as the client). There is also the recipient of the call (often
referred to as the server). It is not necessary to have two-way packet exchanges in the
request-reply format of a Web-based system; often messages are sent only one way.
Wolfgang Emmerich, (1997).

10. 2.5 THE NEED FOR A HOSPITAL MANAGEMENT WEB-BASED
SYSTEM
According to ACG InfoTech Limited, hospital management information systems (HMS) are
"designed to improve the quality and management of clinical care and hospital health care
management in the areas of clinical process analysis and activity-based costing." Improved
patient care, cost control and security are possible benefits of implementing such systems.
However, the implementation of hospital management information systems must be
accompanied by significant planning on the part of management to maximize results.
Hospital Management System are been designed to streamline the business practices of
hospitals and clinics. Through its electronic patient information system, HMS ensures optimum
use of the medical records of patients. Being patient-centric, the system makes it possible for all
disparate files on a patient to be housed in a centrally located master file, ensuring retrieval and
management of files effortless. Plus, easy integration ensures a faster start up.(ACGIL, 2010)
HMS has been so designed as to make its usage intuitive, which makes adoption of HMS by the
hospital personnel quick and easy. Its high level of scalability ensures quick upgrades when
change in the hospital's business practices so demands. What is more, with information
collection, collation and retrieval all digitized, patient care regains top of mind status with
physicians and hospital personnel.
Hospital Management System provides the benefits of streamlined operations, enhanced
administration and control, superior patient care, strict cost control and improved profitability.
Hospital Management System may include the following modules
Financial Accounting
Material Procurement
Inventory Management
Manager functions
Security

11. 2.6BENEFITS OF THE WEB-BASED HMS
2.6.1 Improve Patient Care
HMS can improve patient care: Properly implemented HMS can improve quality of
patient care by increasing the timeliness and accuracy of records and administrative
information. HMS provides simplified access to patient records and other
administrative information for those who need it. It also sets a standard for patient care,
making it more consistent across the board. In many cases, patients can also use the
system to better educate themselves about their diseases and conditions as well as
treatments and outcomes.
2.6.2 Improve Cost Control
Cost control is another benefit: The increased standardization of hospital management
information systems improves cost control by improving efficiency and productivity.
Personnel costs and inventory levels can be reduced through the avoidance of
duplications and repetitions. HMS can also help eliminate confusion and delays that are
caused by incomplete or missing records. These systems provide a managerial tool for
decision making because they offer the functionality of assembling various types of data
into usable reports. Data can be collected and categorized so that managers can analyze
such information as patient lists, bed occupancy rates and statistics categorized by
doctors.
2.6.3 Increased Security
HMS provides increased security of patient information: Hospital management
information systems are secured databases of administrative and patient information
that can be easily accessed only by those who need the information. HMS links
departments without compromising the security of the information involved. For
example, pathology, radiology and administrative offices each have access to the pieces
of a patient's information that are necessary to completing their individual job functions
without allowing access to information that is not specifically relevant to that function.