RESEARCH ON PATIENT MEDICAL INFORMATION SYSTEM USING

BIOMETRIC FINGERPRINT AUTHENTICATION IN SERVICE

DELIVERY IN NAIROBI

D/UPMET/19001/019

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION (BACKGROUND INFORMATION)

Fingerprint based medical system introduces the efficient way to store patients
clinical records. It is used to determine the patients past health record quickly and
easily by using the fingerprint recognition technology. The medical information
system which enables a reliable electronic medical record system stored in the
database. To provide security to the information many cryptography algorithms are
introduced. The sensitive medical information is protected by using watermark
stenographic techniques and thus sending the confirmation message to the patient.
This system replaces the conventional paper based medical records with electronic
medical record system.

Biometrics is a method of recognizing a recognizing a person’s unique physiological

characteristics or behavioral characteristic. It is used for providing data privacy as
well as the privacy of the confidential financial transactions. The different biometric
techniques include the face, iris, retina, fingerprints, hand geometry, hand writing,
and voice. Fingerprints scanning technology is one of the oldest biometric sciences
and uses different fingerprint features to identify and verify the identity of the
individuals. Every fingerprint has unique patterns and characteristics. Fingerprint
pattern consists of lines and spaces. The lines are known as ridges whereas the space
between the ridges is called the valley. This pattern of ridges and valleys are used
for the verification and the authorization of the fingerprints. Use of fingerprint based
login in healthcare is to ensure patient safety since most of health care companies
remain one of the most targeted sectors by attackers, driven by the high value
compromised data can command on the black market, along with the continued
digitization and sharing of medical records.
 PROBLEM STATEMENT

Maintaining data is deemed to be one of the biggest problems of healthcare entities.

Health care organizations face a substantially larger number of malicious threats to
security. Exposure of protected health information, once a rare occurrence is now
almost an everyday occurrence. In the past few years, the healthcare industry has
been the victim of data breach, which involved patient data being stolen or lost.
According to snell, hospital data breaches accounted for approximately 30% of large
data security incidents reported from 2009 to 2016. (1) Data breaches like these can
cost organizations millions of dollars in fines and damage-control efforts. In light of
the trend and considering the tremendous value of the information being stolen, it is
important that healthcare entities know how to deal with this menace. (2) Several
methods have been proposed in order to combat this. The most popular is giving
different access rights to different positions, such as manager and of a health ID.
Despite all these, healthcare data breach still occurs due cases of stolen identity. This
study purposes the development of patient medical information system using
fingerprint. The use of fingerprint access right is more customized and secure due to
little or incidents of stolen fingerprints.

RESEARCH QUESTIONS

1. How does the use of fingerprint based authentication systems impact on

service delivery in healthcare facilities in Kenya.
2. How is the biometric fingerprint identification method compared to the
password based identification system?
3. What are the factors affecting the performance of the biometric fingerprint
authentication system in healthcare facilities.

BROAD OBJECTIVES

To acquire the level of knowledge and appreciation of biometric-enabled security

access solutions by the employees and the management.
 SPECIFIC OBJECTIVES

 To analyze the role of biometric fingerprint authentication system in health

care privacy and security management of medical information of the patients.
 To measure the acceptability and performance of fingerprint biometric to
identify individuals in demographic surveillance populations and those
attending healthcare facilities serving the surveillance population.
 To identify and discuss the issues and success factors surrounding biometrics.

VALUE OF THE STUDY

This study significantly contributes to the existing knowledge on biometrics and
shall provide reference material to the scholars. The research recommendation is of
importance to researchers, as it provides basis for further research work on other
aspect of patient medical information system by using biometric fingerprint
identification. The findings of this research are beneficial to decision makers in
Kenya healthcare. They will be able to make informed decisions regarding
application of biometric fingerprint authentication in healthcare sector. For
engineers and system developers the research as well informs them of the
experiences of the customers as well as the performances of the systems. This will
help them in their future biometrics solution designs.

JUSTIFICATION
Biometrics authentication is an authentication mechanism based on automated
identification or verification of a person’s unique physiological or behavioral
characteristics (downs and sands 2004). For example, fingerprint technology can be
implemented for accessing electronic health records. It also foster quality care to
patients, speed and accuracy of work, maintains patient’s history and reduces cost
of maintenance. Biometric fingerprint authentication technology also facilitates
remote access to electronic health records by using a biometric feature as an
authentication method (marohn 2006). However, there technical and usability issues
to be considered when selecting and using biometric technology. These are accuracy
of the biometric technological obsolescence of the scanners, existence of biometric
feature, enroll ability and suitability for the medical atmosphere (marohn 2006).
Biometric technologies have been voted as a possible technical solution for these for
this issues because of its ability to provide a mechanism to verify individual identity.
(Zungia et al, 2010). So the biometric security, administrators can reduce the time,
costs and problems that come with other techniques. (ehow.com)

LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY

 The survey was only limited to the scope of Nairobi.
 The study was also limited to the topic on biometrics and service delivery
in health sectors.
 Availability of literature especially local literature on this subject of
biometrics was another limitation to the study.
 A number of respondents were unable to complete the administered
questionnaires.
 Time limit was a challenge so making it not possible to get more
respondents to attain targeted sample size for the study.
 Some of the respondents would openly lie.

ASSUMPTION OF THE STUDY

 The Data collected will be complete
 The respondents will be cooperative
 The Distribution of the questionnaire will be dispatched to respective study
areas on time and collection in time.

DELEMETATION
The study looked into other studies that have been done by other scholars on this
subject. The study focused on patient medical information system by use of
biometric fingerprint authentication in service delivery in Kenya and the scope of
the study will based in Nairobi area. So the respondents of the study will be the users
(clinicians) and service engineers of respective selected hospital in Nairobi. Thus the
data will be collected from targeted population by use of questionnaire.
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