A Proposed Automated Medical Records Tracking System For The Ridge Hospital

ABSTRACT The astronomical increase in attendance rate at health institutions confront medical records managers with large volumes o f records to manage. Records storage facilities and information retrieval system s are therefore faced with several challenges in medical records management. This situation is very crucial if patients medical records retrieval system s are w holly manual. At the Ridge hospital, the manual medical records tracking system contributes immensely to missing patients medical records, delays and long queues patients endure before receiving medical treatment. T his paper therefore employs the system s analysis and design approach, (also know n as system s development lifecycle) to design and develop an automated medical records tracking system . This proposed system is a case study at the Ridge Hospital which is limited to tracking and management of only inpatients records. Based on the adopted methodology, preliminary investigations and analysis o f the manual system w ere conducted to find the scope o f the problem . Following the results o f the system s analysis, Microsoft Access database program w as used to develop a logical design to automate the manual tracking system . T he design w as finally modified and developed by using Microsoft Visual Basic 6 codes to operate as an automated medical records tracking system . T he developed system does not only track records faster and m ore efficiently than the manual system but can also perform other records management functions such as generation o f reports on admissions and discharge cases.