Decision support system for predicting Typhoid disease occurrence based on environmental factors

Abstract

Environmental factors like temperature, rainfall and humidity are assumed to play an important role in the incidence of typhoid fever. According to (Wang, 2012), climatic variables such as, rainfall, vapour pressure and temperature have an important effect on the transmission and distribution of typhoid infections in human populations. Kabwana noted that high typhoid incidences in 2015 indicate that the Ugandan population is susceptible to a typhoid outbreak. The Objectives of this study was to develop a Decision Support System for predicting occurrence of typhoid based on environmental risk factors which will help MoH and IPs in the Health sector to plan better and make informed decisions The project will focus on monthly typhoid data trends from MoH national reporting system for the period 2015-2017 and rainfall, temperature and humidity data from UNMA for the same period 2015-2017 for Kampala district which was used as the case study. The study followed a rigorous research process which included analyzing the current systems and Object-oriented strategy for design system design. Data collected for the same period was analyzed using STATA and a prediction model developed and integrated into the prototype. An interview guide was used to collect useful information to help in understanding the data flow. After running the prediction model, It was discovered that Temperature and rainfall affected the incidence of typhoid while humidity has no significant effect on the results. The DSS developed will facilitate the process of capturing environmental variables that have a causal effect to typhoid occurrence, predicting typhoid fever cases, and outputting the forecast typhoid cases. Integration of such a system with capabilities of predicting expected typhoid cases with eHMIS should be done to enable quick access to information, ease of use, making more informed decisions and planning.