معماری سیستم مانیتورینگ بیمار از راه دور برای مدیریت دیابت Remote patient monitoring system architecture for diabetes management

1. Introduction Diabetes Mellitus is a chronic disease that affects about 347 million people (about 5 percent of the world’s population) out of which more than three-quarters live in developing countries. People suffering from diabetes need to be monitored, since their blood sugar ought to be regulated. However, there are several remote diabetes patients monitoring systems but mostly they cannot make decision about the patients; this is very essential if we look at the challenges faced in developing countries like lack of qualified medical personnel and health care facilities among others [1]. On the other hand, to develop any system, application, or software the following system development stages need to be followed, these include identifying the requirements/specifications, design, development, testing and finally implementation [2, 3]. In the course of the design, the architecture of the system need to be defined first then the system will be designed based on that architecture [4, 5]. The architecture is the abstract representation of the subsystems, and the flow of information within subsystems that make up the whole system [5, 6]. In this work, we are proposing an architecture of a system that would help doctors to make decision on their patients; these types of systems are commonly referred to as Decision Support Systems. Decision Support System (DSS) is an information system that supports decision making activities in an organization, quite often DSSs are interactive [7]. A DSS that focus on clinical applications is called Clinical Decision Support System (CDSS). CDSS as described by Jao and Hier [8], is a system that uses case-based reasoning to help clinicians access disease status, make diagnosis, select appropriate therapy or make other clinical decisions. The use of words like support, help, etc. in defining DSS is very important, especially to clarify the fact that DSS are not replacing the experts or decision makers [9]. Generally, DSS application consists of five basic components but the content and structure may vary, these are: database, model base, knowledge base, user interface and users [10]. The database stores the data that is used for the decision making, it also allows the user to access and manipulate the data. Model base allows the analysis of the problem using models like financial, statistical, etc. Knowledge base is like a repository where knowledge about the problem is kept; usually it represents the expert in a particular field. User interface deals with communication between the user and the DSS. Users are the individuals that use the DSS; in other word are the decision makers [11].