ISSN: 2312-7694

Muhammad et al. / International Journal of Computer and Communication System Engineering (IJCCSE)

SMS BASED FIRST AID TREATMENT MANAGEMENT

SYSTEM FOR RURAL AREAS OF BALTISTAN
Nauman Ali Khan

Muhammad Ibrar khan

Assistant Professor, Department of Management Sciences,
Karakoram International University, Skardu Campus,
Pakistan.
E-mail: ibrar.khan@kiu.edu.pk

Lecturer, Department of Computer Science, Karakoram

International University, Skardu Campus, Pakistan.
E-mail: nauman.ali@kiu.edu.pk

Sarah Zeeba Asghar

Student of MS, Department of Computer Science,
Islamia College University Peshawar, Pakistan.
E-mail: sarahzasghar@gmail.com

Abstract In the recent years, mobile technology in Pakistan

has boosted up and has become a vital necessity of almost every
inhabitant. Not only in terms of communication but in many
other aspects of life, mobile technology is catering the needs of a
dominant part of population of this country. Innovative
utilization of mobile technology in rural areas of Baltistan region
has enabled the local people to get the first aid treatment in time.
Worthy to be mentioned of all, is the mobile based medical
treatment system of mobile technology. It allows the people from
rural areas of Baltistan to take utmost benefit of getting the
appropriate first aid treatment in time. Keeping in mind the
rapid trend of sending and receiving Short Messages Service
(SMS) among people, the proposed model is based on the
utilization of SMS. The system was made accurate and precise by
managing resources and applying data mining techniques. Our
Aims mainly includes (1) Survey of mobile users in rural areas of
Baltistan. (2) Survey of distant places in rural areas from the
main division head quarter hospital (3) Highlighting first aid
cases from rural areas in past one year (4) Proposal of SMS
based framework for first aid treatment. For the evaluation of
survey for the first aid cases we adopted cross-sectional
descriptive survey. We also conducted questionnaire based
survey for the evaluation of those areas that are far away from
the main hospital and mobile users of those rural areas of
Baltistan that is situated in northern zone of Pakistan. It was
found that more than 70% users can use easily operate the text
message (SMS) facility of mobile in the defined areas of Baltistan.
Conducting the survey and evaluation is the major part of the
research. Survey includes highlighting of ratio of mobile users
and areas that are far away from DHQ (Division headquarter)
hospital. We also highlighted the first aid cases belonging to rural
areas of 2013. By examining the results intimately we proposed a
robust system that will facilitate the patients of rural areas.
Index Terms SMS, Mobile medical treatment, Management
information system, Data mining.
Introduction

Analysis of the previous history shows an exponential

growth in the population of Pakistan. The increasing

2014, IJCCSE All Rights Reserved

population has put somewhat of a strain to the presently

available facilities since some of the facilities offered are not
adequate and because of that, consumer requirement cannot be
satisfied sufficiently.
Glancing into a few of the unsatisfied facilities that are now
taking the shape of issues in Pakistan are Education and more
importantly Health [1]. Health facilities in Pakistan have long
been overlooked; people especially living in remote areas or
villages are more susceptible to health issues since their
approach to a doctor in the time of illness could be obstructed
by the distance they have to cover to reach to a medical
facility. Most of the time people who could be able to make to
the doctors in the cities are usually handled by the touts, who
just to make more money, push the innocent people into having
many random expensive medical tests which are not even
required.
Information Technology, a facility but now becoming a
requirement has a deeper impact on the lives of people
everywhere in the world. Especially mobile phones, a person
who whether can afford a decent living or not, can afford to
have a mobile phone since it being now a basic requirement of
the person in the present era. The situation of people in
Pakistan using mobile phones feverishly is no exception [2].
As discussed the present situation of health and peoples
approach to the doctors, mobile phone can play a vital role in
catering the need of people in this regard. Not only that,
systems can be constructed that can save up much time of
doctors by prescribing accurate medicine to the patients having
symptoms of ordinary or seasonal diseases or allergies by just
receiving and sending a small and simple SMS. This way not
only much portion of the population will get proper medical
care in time but would be spared much inconvenience in
approaching the doctor.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows:
Section II describes the literature review on medical ex pert
systems around the world. Section III discusses the survey
conducted on the mobile usage in the rural areas of Baltistan
and finding of those areas that are far away from the main

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Muhammad et al. / International Journal of Computer and Communication System Engineering (IJCCSE)
hospital. Section IV demonstrates a proposed sms based expert
system that will facilitate patients. It also explains the extensive
evaluation of the proposed system in different directions. In
Last, section VI concludes with future directions.
I. LITERATURE REVIEW
Many people in the world especially in the developing
countries have their ordinary diseases reach up to a chronic
stage when they are not given proper medical care. An accurate
medicine can mitigate any common or seasonal disease or
allergy only if given or prescribed at the right time.
Unfortunately, in Pakistan many times people have to face
severity in their disease since usually distance or touts dont let
them approach the doctor in time [3].
While analyzing the medical fields history of Pakistan, we
find that mostly patients were brought to doctors when they
were on their last stage. If somehow they would have been
treated on early stages with some efficient technique then the
ratio of terrible cases could have been decreased. The present
situation of health and peoples approach to the doctors in
northern rural areas of Pakistan is not satisfactory and easy
enough. In order to make the condition better, mobile phones
having short message service (sms) facility can play a vital role
in catering the need of medical care of people. In addition to
that, systems can be constructed that can save up much time of
doctors by prescribing accurate medicine to the registered
patients having symptoms of ordinary or seasonal diseases or
allergies by just receiving and sending a small and simple
SMS. By this way not only much portion of the population will
get proper medical care in time but would be spared much
inconvenience in approaching the doctor.
One of the techniques is working on the highlighted issue
that mobile technology can significantly be used in catering the
need of medical care of people. So there are projects running
around the world that involve the basic idea of using mobile
technology. One of the related projects is mHealth. The project
has been carried out in a number of developed countries. The
sole purpose of this project is to boost up the way a patient is
medically treated and his record is maintained by involving
mobile technology and remote monitoring devices. There are
many useful mobile applications and monitoring devices which
have been developed for not only pregnant women for
guidance but for the patients who have been fighting with
chronic health issues. The activities that have been running
under this project not only prove to be helpful for the patients
but equally for the doctors too, as these technological activities
save up much of their time for the patients who need serious
medical treatment. [6]
A secreted social network that has been constructed to
exchange personalized mobile content among a number of
mobile users can be helpful for the technological medical
activities that are carried out where the involvement of mobile
technology can be seen. To make the social network more
substantial, an interactive approach has been used. [7]
Since there can be plenty of message forwarding between
the patients and the doctor, a model that has been built to

2014, IJCCSE All Rights Reserved

contain numerous senders and recipients. Patient and doctor

both could send out multiple messages as well prove to be
supportive for the technological medical activities. [8]
So, the system that has been suggested above to be
constructed is tested and applied in a few of the developed
countries [3]. Since, Pakistan is a developing country and much
of the information technology except the mobile phones could
not yet make its way into most of the villages and remote areas
[2] so these systems which would be placed in different
hospitals and clinics would prove to be very helpful in meeting
the medical requirements of the patients with ordinary diseases
without having a human doctor attending them [5].
Treatment using mobiles and other technology is growing
rapidly. Through analysis it is also seen that these technologies
are enhancing the facility and communication between patient
doctor relationships. If short message service and other facility
are used to their optimum then easily this gap of relation
between doctor and patient can be overcome simultaneously if
the intelligence is also applied to understand the exact context
it can really help to the betterment of communication.
II. MOBILE USAGE AND FIRST AID SURVEY
We conducted the survey in the rural areas of three ci-ties
Skardu, Shigar and Khapolo that are situated in northern areas
of Pakistan. These three cities are among the major cities of
Baltistan region. Main purpose of the survey was to find out
the percentage of those mobile users, who can easily send,
receive and read message. As discussed above, it is difficult for
the patient to reach on time to the main hospital especially
when first aid is required. Thats why we specifically took
survey from those villages that are situated at 20 or above
kilometers. (Survey was based mainly three features i-e
Number of family members, Number of members that have
mobile facility and number of member that can use the texting
facility.

Survey form details are given in Table 2. Beside this we

also conducted a comprehensive survey to find out the need of
sms based treatment by gathering more information about
every region. The detail of that information is explained
through the Table 2. Three key feature of each village were
observed closely first one Away from the nearest main
hospital This feature helped us in highlighting the small cities
those are away from the main DHQ (District Head Quarter)
Hospital. This measure specifically enforced that this specific
region is equal to or more than 10 km away from the nearest
main hospital. Main reason of highlighting this measure is to

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Muhammad et al. / International Journal of Computer and Communication System Engineering (IJCCSE)
highlight the need to help those people who has difficulty to
reach to main hospital on time. Second No of First aid cases
from this region in DHQ (For Year 2013) It was also observed
that most of the first aid cases are directly associated to these
cities. Third essential key feature of survey was Which mobile
service available the justification of highlighting the mobile
service is to check the availability of mobile technology. By
conducting the survey we found various results shown in Table
2.
If we analyze the table we can find most of the village that
have mobile facility but hospitals are not easily accessible.
By seeing results of survey, two key findings were observed. Most of members are having mobile and that
technology can easily be used for the first aid treatment
purpose. Secondly the ratio of first cases is in big number.

III. PROPOSED METHODOLOGY

Our system uses several methodologies. Overall, it adopts
the feature of an expert system and for faster communication
cell phones texting facility is used. The proposed work is about
constructing a system that can receive SMS (Short Message
Service) from a registered patient. System will read the SMS,
extract the symptoms of the disease written in the SMS using
string mining algorithm and prescribe accurate medicine for the
disease stored in its database through sending a message back
to the patient. In case, the sent symptoms are of a kind of
disease for which the system has no accurate prescription into
its database then it will send a SMS directly to the doctor on
the mobile phone who would prescribe the medicine for the
patient through sending a SMS back to the system which will
further send it on the patients mobile phone.
Example scenario A patient needs medical care for a
seasonal allergy
System will receive a SMS from the patient. In that SMS,
patient writes about the symptoms of her disease i.e. I have
dry cough, a bit of running nose, sneezing, body ache, and
sleepy condition all the time. Doctor Can you please suggest
medicine for me? .The System will immediately extract the
symptoms out of the SMS by using string mining and
classification algorithm. It will look for the words that are

2014, IJCCSE All Rights Reserved

stored in its database and can be considered as symptoms of

any disease. The system will send a SMS back to the patient on
mobile phone prescribing her Dr.koff cough syrup,
Zentaczeritic, Levofloxacin and Nasarin. The patient again
sends a SMS to system in which she says Sorry doctor Im
allergic to Zentaczeritic. The system sends this and the
previous SMS to the human doctor and the doctor will suggest
xadine in the SMS. The system on receiving this SMS will
forward it to the patient on her mobile phone and will be saving
the same answer for the future use as well.
The Propose system will use string mining technique. The
symptoms it will extract from a received SMS, from a
registered patient, will be extracted with the help of string
mining i.e. relative string mining algorithm [4] will be working
to support system efficiently. The prescription that will be

suggested by the system will be stored in its database. The

received mined symptoms will be matched with the symptoms
of the disease stored in the database of the system and names of
the accurate medicines that will also be stored in its database
will be sent back as a SMS to the patient on her mobile phone.
Figure 1 demonstrates the flow of data in the proposed
system. From Patient 1 to n are connected to the system. By
connection we mean registered to the system. All the messages
from the patient will be sent directly to the system instead of
doctor. From this point two situations can occur.
First situation: If the query in the form of text message is
stored in data base, after mining automatically an appropriate
reply will be send back to the same patient.
Second situation: If the query in the form of text message is
not stored in data base, original message will be sent to the real
doctor that is also registered to the database. Now real doctor
will reply that query, it will be sent back to patient and will be
stored for the future use as well.
IV. EVALUATION OF PROPOSED MODEL
The evaluation of proposed work has been done by
comparing the prescription generated by the expert system for
a certain disease against the doctors prescription for the same
disease. To check the correctness and effectiveness of the
expert system, a SMS has been sent to the system, telling in the

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SMS about the symptoms of a disease. The system, on
receiving the SMS, extracted the symptoms of the disease with
the help of string mining i.e. the most efficient string mining
algorithm is used that is working to support the expert system
in mining out the string of characters from the SMS that can
tell about the disease accurately. The prescription that has been
suggested by the system was stored in its database. The

received mined symptoms were matched with the symptoms of

the disease stored in the database of the system and names of
the accurate medicines that were also stored in its database
were sent back as a SMS.
Subsequently, a group of ten doctors were being
approached and they were asked to prescribe medicines for the
same disease that has been given to the expert system through
the SMS to generate appropriate prescription for the similar
question asked by the patient in the sms. The medicines, those
ten doctors prescribed were then compared against the
medicines that have been prescribed by the expert system.
Among the medicines which were prescribed by the group of
ten doctors, medicines by five doctors were an exact match
with the medicines that were prescribed by the expert system.
Three of the doctors gave somewhat of similar prescription but
the other two doctors gave not very similar prescription as
compared to the one the expert system generated.
This whole exercise of the evaluation of the system shows
the effectiveness and correctness of the system. Since, the
system generated an accurate prescription for a disease that

2014, IJCCSE All Rights Reserved

was when asked about by the doctor(s), most of them also

prescribed the same medicines.
The evaluation also shows that the string mining algorithm
that has been working in the background of the system is
efficient enough to mine out the most accurate string of
characters from the SMS that could precisely tell about the
disease.

V. CONCLUSION
This paper provides a review of the existing medical expert
systems around the world. There are several medical projects
running, and expert systems deployed at different medical
centers and hospitals in a couple of developed countries that
facilitate the patients of those countries to have access to a
proper and quick medical treatment in time of their illness,
without approaching a doctor. There are numerous
advantageous mobile applications and monitoring devices
which have been developed for not only pregnant women for
guidance but for the patients who have been combating with
chronic health issues. These medical expert systems and
projects, not only prove to be helpful for the patients but
equally for the doctors too, as these technological activities
save up much of their time for the patients who need
immediate medical treatment.
A survey was conducted in the northern areas of Baltistan,
Pakistan. Statistics of people especially living in remote areas
or villages were acquired, who are more susceptible to health

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Muhammad et al. / International Journal of Computer and Communication System Engineering (IJCCSE)
issues since their approach to a doctor in the time of illness
could be obstructed by the distance they have to cover to reach
to the main DHQ (District Head Quarter) Hospital. Along with
that, the other feature of the survey was to identify the
availability of mobile service. Through the survey and its
findings, the need of creating a system for medical first aid
treatment was found.
In this paper, a framework is proposed to address the
highlighted problem. The system that has been proposed can
receive SMS (Short Message Service) from a registered
patient. System will read the SMS, extract the symptoms of the
disease written in the SMS using string mining algorithm and
prescribe accurate medicine for the disease stored in its
database through sending a message back to the patient. If, in
case, the sent symptoms are of a kind of disease for which the
system has no accurate prescription into its database then it will
send a SMS directly to the doctor on the mobile phone who
would prescribe the medicine for the patient through sending a
SMS back to the system which will further send it on the
patients mobile phone.
As the future work, our proposed system will be
implemented at different hospitals. To check the correctness
and effectiveness of the expert system, the system will be
evaluated. The evaluation of the system will be done by
comparing the results generated by the system, before and after
the implementation.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT

The authors would like to thanks to the work and time

given by Mr. Faiz ali and Mr. Kashif ali shigri for helping us
in conducting the survey at Khaplo and Shiger region, we are

2014, IJCCSE All Rights Reserved

specially thankful to Dr. Nisar Ul Haq for their valuable time

they served for reviewing the paper.
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