school

UM E-Theses Collection (澳門大學電子學位論文庫)

check Full Text
Title

Contact tracing in Health-Care Information System : with SARS as a case study

English Abstract

The outbreaks of emerging infectious diseases [1], such as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), Avian Influenza (H5N1) and currently Swine Influenza (H1N1), and re-emerging infectious diseases [1], such as Dengue Fever and Tuberculosis (TB), pose a significant threat to the health of the worldwide population. Control and prevention of infectious diseases is notoriously complex and problematic due to the ever increasing number of international travellers. In addition, the risk of being infected with an infectious disease in densely populated urban areas tends to be much higher compared to rural areas. When an outbreak occurs, the identifications of source of infection (or index case) and transmission routes between cases in a rapid manner are crucial to prevent further spread of the infectious disease. Contact tracing [2], [3] has proven to be helpful for these identifications. In the past, contact tracing has been a field work of the medical personnel with little assistance of Information Technology (IT), if any. During the worldwide outbreak of SARS in 2003, Health Care Information Systems (HCISs) were built to facilitate contact tracing in the infected regions. However, contact tracing has certain problems in its traditional approach. Since these HCISs have adopted the traditional approach of contact tracing in their implementation, so contact tracing in these systems have inherited the same problems. In this thesis, the author will point out these problems and propose a systematic method to solve these problems. For this reason, a HCIS will be proposed and its prototype will be built to show the applicability of this method.

Issue date

2009.

Author

Leong, Kan Ion

Faculty

Faculty of Science and Technology

Department

Department of Computer and Information Science

Degree

M.Sc.

Subject

SARS (Disease)

SARS (Disease) -- Hong Kong

Health services administration

Management information systems

Supervisor

Si, Yain Whar

Files In This Item

TOC & Abstract

Full-text (Intranet only)

Location
1/F Zone C
Library URL
991004837209706306