Abstract:
The health sector in any country has been recognized as the primary engine to economic growth and development. The National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) is a corporate body established by the Federal Government of Nigeria to improve the health of all Nigerians at an affordable cost through various prepayment systems. The use of mobile technology in accessing healthcare offers a great opportunity in improving the system functionality. This research work is therefore motivated by the need to take advantage of the benefits of mobile technology in addressing the limitations of the National Health Insurance Scheme. One of the limitations of the scheme is that any individual registered under the scheme is restricted to his/her primary healthcare where he/she is registered. There is also no centralized database system for managing registered enrollees. Thus a system that will allow enrollees to gain access to healthcare services in any accredited NHIS hospital nearest to them at the time health services are required was developed. The system consisted of a two-tier client-server configuration. The client side, (an android device) is the enrollees’ module and hospital module, while the server side consists of a NHIS centralized database hosted on a web server. The enrollees’ module allows authorized access and transactions on enrollees’ mobile device while the hospital module allows enrollees information to be retrieved. The system was implemented using Hypertext Preprocessor (PHP), JavaScript (JS), Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) as the front-end. My Structured Query Language (My SQL) database was used as the back-end. The application was tested on mobile devices of selected enrollees. The evaluation of the system was done through the use of questionnaire given to the selected enrollees. The response shows that the system is easy to use and NHIS enrollees can have access to healthcare services in any accredited NHIS hospital nearest to them at the time health services are required.
