Developing a Unified Green Computing and Communication System Prototype for Outpatient Medication Processes

Abstract

Health is the most critical issue in human life. In order to protect the individuals from these health challenges, diverse health-care institutions are established. However, in most areas due to the use of manual systems they face challenges in terms of safety, timeliness, accuracy, data redundancy, resource efficiency, and greenness challenges. Primarily this the study was aimed at analyzing the paper-based patient information computing and communication system using different parameters like safety, timeliness, accuracy, resource efficiency, data redundancy, and greenness over cloud-based a questionnaire distributed to selected stakeholders, technical observation and interview of experts. After the collection and analysis of the primary data, a web-based patient information communication and computing system prototype named Green Patient Information Computing and Communication System (PICCS) was developed and tested. ASP.NET and database tool MS SQL Server was used for prototype deployment and demonstration. Intel Application Energy Toolkit was used to collect Green PICCS power consumption data. The study has conducted a comparative analysis between existing systems and Green PICCS and found that Green PICCS has achieved better safety (5.97% vs. 84.67% unsafe), timeliness (3.90% vs. 88.54% not quick), resource efficiency (5.40% vs. 85.15% inefficient), accuracy (2.70% vs. 85.30% inaccurate), and data redundancy (5.40% vs. 90.55% data redundant), greenness (17.13% paper consumption and 13.64% power consumption of the existing system paper consumption was reduced). The greenness evaluation was done using two viewpoints ‘green by software’ — the amount of CO2 emission generated from paper consumption and ‘green in software’ — the amount of CO2 emission generated from power consumption. It was recommended that further studies are also anticipated to scale up the coverage of Green PICCS and improve its power consumption (greenness).

Keywords: Safety, accuracy, timeliness, resource efficiency, redundancy, greenness, healthcare, Green PICCS