MatES: Web-based Forward Chaining Expert System for Maternal Care
This addresses the knowledge gap for health extension workers in maternal care in low-resource settings like Ethiopia, though it is incremental as it applies existing expert system methods to a new domain.
The paper tackled the problem of high maternal mortality in Ethiopia by developing a web-based forward chaining expert system for maternal care, which can be accessed via browsers on computers and smartphones to train health extension workers and provide suggestions for 10 major diseases in Sub-Saharan Africa.
The solution to prevent maternal complications are known and preventable by trained health professionals. But in countries like Ethiopia where the patient to physician ratio is 1 doctor to 1000 patients, maternal mortality and morbidity rate is high. To fill the gap of highly trained health professionals, Ethiopia introduced health extension programs. Task shifting to health extension workers (HEWs) contributed in decreasing mortality and morbidity rate in Ethiopia. Knowledge-gap has been one of the major challenges to HEWs. The reasons are trainings are not given in regular manner, there is no midwife, gynecologists or doctors around for consultation, and all guidelines are paper-based which are easily exposed to damage. In this paper, we describe the design and implementation of a web-based expert system for maternal care. We only targeted the major 10 diseases and complication of maternal health issues seen in Sub-Saharan Africa. The expert system can be accessed through the use of web browsers from computers as well as smart phones. Forward chaining rule-based expert system is used in order to give suggestions and create a new knowledge from the knowledge-base. This expert system can be used to train HEWs in the field of maternal health. Keywords: expert system, maternal care, forward-chaining, rule-based expert system, PHLIPS