Towards Providing Full Spectrum Antenatal Health Care in Low and Middle Income Countries

Muhammad Abubakar, Amina Bibi, Rashad Hussain, Zohra Bibi, Asma Gul, Zahid Bashir, Salman Noshear Arshad, Momin Ayub Uppal, Safee Ullah Chaudhary

2016

Abstract

The provision of Antenatal Care (ANC) for pregnant women plays a vital role in ensuring infant and maternal health. Limited access to antenatal care in Low and Middle Income Countries (LMIC) results in high Infant and Maternal Mortality Rate (IMR and MMR, respectively). In this work, we propose a cloud-based clinical Decision Support System (DSS) integrated with a wearable health-sensor network for patient self-diagnosis and real time health monitoring. Patient assessment is performed by evaluating the human-input coupled with sensor-generated symptomatic information using a Bayesian network driven DSS. High risk pregnancies can be identified and monitored along with dispensing of consultant advice directly to the patient. Patient and disease incidence data is stored on the cloud for tuning probabilities of the Bayesian network towards improving accuracy of predicting anomalies within the epidemiological context. The system therefore, aims to control IMR and MMR by providing ubiquitous access to ANC in LMICs. A scaled-up implementation of the proposed system can help reduce patient influx at the limited tertiary care centers by referring low-risk cases to primary or secondary care establishments.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Abubakar M., Bibi A., Hussain R., Bibi Z., Gul A., Bashir Z., Arshad S., Uppal M. and Chaudhary S. (2016). Towards Providing Full Spectrum Antenatal Health Care in Low and Middle Income Countries . In Proceedings of the 9th International Joint Conference on Biomedical Engineering Systems and Technologies - Volume 5: HEALTHINF, (BIOSTEC 2016) ISBN 978-989-758-170-0, pages 478-483. DOI: 10.5220/0005823104780483

in Bibtex Style

@conference{healthinf16,
author={Muhammad Abubakar and Amina Bibi and Rashad Hussain and Zohra Bibi and Asma Gul and Zahid Bashir and Salman Noshear Arshad and Momin Ayub Uppal and Safee Ullah Chaudhary},
title={Towards Providing Full Spectrum Antenatal Health Care in Low and Middle Income Countries},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 9th International Joint Conference on Biomedical Engineering Systems and Technologies - Volume 5: HEALTHINF, (BIOSTEC 2016)},
year={2016},
pages={478-483},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0005823104780483},
isbn={978-989-758-170-0},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF
JO - Proceedings of the 9th International Joint Conference on Biomedical Engineering Systems and Technologies - Volume 5: HEALTHINF, (BIOSTEC 2016)
TI - Towards Providing Full Spectrum Antenatal Health Care in Low and Middle Income Countries
SN - 978-989-758-170-0
AU - Abubakar M.
AU - Bibi A.
AU - Hussain R.
AU - Bibi Z.
AU - Gul A.
AU - Bashir Z.
AU - Arshad S.
AU - Uppal M.
AU - Chaudhary S.
PY - 2016
SP - 478
EP - 483
DO - 10.5220/0005823104780483