Developing a knowledge-based system for diagnosis and treatment of malaria

Malaria is a serious and fatal disease caused by a parasite that can infect a certain type of mosquito which feeds on human blood. It is a public health problem in Ethiopia and a major cause of illness and death. More than 75% of the total land of Ethiopia is malarious affecting more than 68% of the population, making malaria the leading public health problem in Ethiopia. In an effort to address such problems, it is important to develop knowledge-based system (KBS) that can provide advice for health professionals and patients to facilitate diagnosis and treatment of malaria patients. Experimental research design was used to developed prototype system. Purposive sampling technique was used to select domain experts for knowledge acquisition. The domain experts are selected from Jimma special hospital, Adama hospital and Agaro health centre. The knowledge was acquired using both structured and unstructured interviews from domain experts and represented by production rule, (if- then method). The user's acceptance of the prototype system by visual interaction method that by showing the prototype system to the domain experts was conducted result is 83.21%. In addition, performance of the prototype system was evaluated using case testing method and produce result of 82.3%. It is promising to save the life of people in rural area where there is scarcity of health professionals and apparatus. In addition, it is possible to reduce time and cost of diagnosis and treatment in health centre by implementing intelligent systems. Developing in local languages, good interface programming language and in other techniques are the future works of the study.