Prototype towards secure sharing of patient’s medical records over the internet

Abstract

Medical laboratory testing plays a crucial role in the detection, diagnosis and treatment of diseases in patients. Any attempt to alter clinical data can be a life threat to a patient. However, file sharing Privacy concern is arguably the major barrier that hinders the deployment of electronic health record (EHR) systems, which are considered more efficient, less error-prone, and of higher availability compared to traditional paper record systems. Systems used for diagnosis and treatment have been considered as one of the major hindrances of which data integrity and confidentiality are still an issue because they involve a manual process of obtaining patient records and their retrieval. In this project an EHR system is developed for case study that is Mbarara Diagnostic center, which is a privately owned laboratory that also provides clinical services with improved security features as its core. The system uses cryptography tools for data encryption that is AES (Advanced encryption standard). The system also caters for user session time out when idol so as to avoid masqueraders from unauthorized access and data modification. To achieve the objectives of this project, data was collected using paper prototyping as a technique for requirements gathering and elicitation. This approach helped identify fault early in the systems design process. The requirements collected were thematically analyzed and used to design the web based EHR system. The system developed seeks to provide a cheaper alternative to existing EHR systems. Furthermore to improve quality of data captured for easy access and secured sharing between authorized parties. In addition it will boost client’s confidence in services provided at the facility.