WEBUSSD CARE: A MULTI-TENANT USSD BASED APPLICATION FOR IMPROVING PROTECTED HEALTH INFORMATION EXCHANGE

Abstract

Quick access to patient's protected health information avails clinicians the insight to understand patient's health conditions and to make an informed treatment decisions. However, the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic placed serious access restriction not only to the healthcare facilities and services but also to patient's protected health information. Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) technology is an efficient tool that can easily be used to create, store, access, and share personal health data whenever the needs arise. In this study, an integrated multi-tenant USSD based application to improve patient's protected health information exchange is presented as a complementary tool for improving healthcare outcomes. Object oriented methodology with integration of USSD Application Programming Interface (API) was adopted for the system development. The prototype of multi-tenant USSD based application for improving protected health Information exchange has been developed named “WEBUSSD Care”. By dialing a selected code on the mobile phone, the system displays an interactive menu for accessing patient's protected information such as medical appointments, diagnoses, medication prescription, medical test results, report drug reactions and treatment information and so on. The adoption of the WEBUSSD Care could greatly reduce delay in accessing patient's protected health information and enhance timely and informed treatment decisions.