MMTI Theses and Dissertations (2015)

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    A mobile prototype for payments and contributions : case of National Hospital Insurance Fund
    (Strathmore University, 2015) Njoroge, Stephen Gichohi
    The availability of M-Pesa payment system has enabled NHIF to increase its revenue collection as a notable success. However, despite the availability of such system, the report done by United States Agency for International Intelligence states that the system is not able to detect information that might have been erroneously entered and also contributions paid are not reflected on members account in a timely manner. Beneficiaries of health facilities would learn that they could not access services because contributions were not reflected on their member accounts. Also, there is lack of transparency on the audited financial statements and reports which is associated with a failure in internal controls around reconciliations. The aim of this research is to develop and test a mobile prototype for payments and contributions that will validate users so as to detect information that might have been erroneously entered by users to enable their contributions to reflect on their member account on timely basis and also to assist NHIF management to have real-time reports on revenue collected to avoid reconciliation problems. A descriptive study method was used and a target population was sampled out using systematic random sampling method and questionnaires were used to collect data. One set of questionnaires was given to users and the other set was issued to NHIF agents and Management. Data analysis was performed using statistical package for social sciences then summarized and presented in tables using totals and percentages in Microsoft Excel. The proposed application was designed and tested. It was found to be very convenient to the end user since the user can avoid making erroneous payments because the user is validated using their membership details and National ID details. The management is able to view the reports for all payments in real-time therefore enhancing effective reconciliation process to allow comprehensive and continuous monitoring of key financial controls in the reports with increased business visibility.
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    A mobile-web application for visualizing mortality and morbidity levels in Kenyan Counties and their attributing factors: a focus on Kenya health policies
    (Strathmore University, 2015) Orangi, Mercy Kemunto
    The ability of people to enjoy a long, healthy life is critical to a developing nation. In Kenya, the mortality and morbidity levels are high, with the World Health Organization closely linking the wide-spread disparities to underlying social, economic, gender and geographical factors. These levels can be lower, especially for a country striving to achieve a middle-income economy status. Further, any meaningful health policy or health program needs to be informed of the statistics of illnesses and deaths occurring and their causes. However, the main problem has been the lack of a clear association or connection between the illnesses and deaths reported and their attributing factors. Further, in Kenya, data on mortality and morbidity, published through various surveys, has mainly been presented in tabular form in spreadsheets and publications. This has proven to be hard to consume, let alone analyze, for purposes of informing health policy makers. In view of the above shortcomings, this study sought to establish a link between the mortality and morbidity levels in Kenyan counties and their causative factors. To understand the current state of health mortality and morbidity levels, this study looked into existing literature on the state of India’s and Kenya’s mortality and morbidity levels, with a keen focus on health policies and government initiatives. First hand data was also collected through questionnaires. Analysis of findings of the research conducted asserted the need of a visualization tool that provides dynamic, real-time manipulation of data on mortality, morbidity and their attributing factors. Consequently, a visualization tool was developed, allowing users to view the data in a more user-friendly format and further providing real-time manipulation of the data to produce user-defined visualizations, which can further be downloaded in various formats. This can, in turn, help policy makers and researchers make data-based decisions in their various studies.
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    A mobile web based electronic voting system : a case study of Strathmore University student council
    (Strathmore University, 2015) Omondi, Gregory Peter
    Paper ballot voting system brings with it a number of problems such as: slow rate of counting and tabulation of casted votes, inaccurate results due to human error, poor presentation of the ballot papers, inconvenience for the voter to cast a vote, poor participation and turnout, fraud in polling stations and during the transmission and tabulation of result, increase in spoilt ballot, increase in the long term costs of production and distribution of ballot papers. This dissertation aims at the following research objectives: to investigate how electronic voting systems are implemented around the world, to develop a mobile web based electronic voting system and to test and evaluate the developed mobile web based electronic voting system. The dissertation presents a secure mobile web based electronic voting system, a case study of Strathmore University student council elections. The system is inspired by the Estonian Internet voting system architecture with major changes; it can be customized and implemented for a variety of elections such as: large institution elections, party elections, parliamentary elections or even the national elections. The mobile web based electronic system is secured by use of secure socket layer protocol, hashing, public key encryption and secure electronic transmission Protocol. These helped achieve the following security properties: authenticity, confidentiality, integrity, verification, and anonymity. The researcher reviewed relevant literature that was used in designing of the system prototype, this was then followed by a system testing that aimed at measuring the efficiency, effectiveness, ease to learn, interactivity and convenience of the system to the voters. The system testing targeted the Strathmore University students who interacted with the system and filled in questionnaires. The respondents found the system to be very effective, very efficient, extremely easy to learn how to use, very good to interact with, very useful and extremely convenient.
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    A smart phone based expert system for airport screening of infectious diseases : test case with the Ebola virus symptoms
    (Strathmore University, 2015) Owuor, Dickson Odhiambo
    The outbreak of infectious diseases such as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, Influenza and Ebola require that border screening measures be instituted especially at the airports in order to minimize the risk of spreading these infectious diseases by passengers from one country to another. In the case that there is a reported outbreak of an infectious disease in a certain region; people traveling from the affected areas should be screened for the infectious disease’s symptoms before being allowed to mingle with any unaffected population. During the 2014/2015 Ebola outbreak in West Africa, health workers at the major airports of most countries were supposed to diagnose the travelers’ symptoms for the Ebola virus disease in person, and decide if the traveler should be allowed into the country or if the traveler should be isolated in order to undergo further Ebola virus disease tests. This process puts the health worker at the risk of coming into contact with infected travelers and it is also inefficient especially when presented with a large group of travelers. This work presents a smart phone based screening expert system for the Ebola virus disease that can be used at the airports. The expert system uses a temperature sensor and a mobile application to capture the symptoms of the traveler. This inference symptoms are analyzed in relation to a knowledge base in the expert system and the generated results are sent to a health worker’s smartphone device. The proposed system’s execution is spread across the following technology platforms: the Web platform, the Android platform, and the Java platform.
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    M-Career : a personality-based career recommender expert system
    (Strathmore University, 2015) Mwangi, Anne Wanjiru
    Currently, students mainly get career advice from their parents, teachers, peers or career counsellors. These career information sources consider factors like expected remuneration, job location, the current market trends and social preferences in their recommendation. Personality is very influential in the career decision-making process of high school and university students. Moreover, when students select careers that do not agree with their personalities, they lack interest in the course and eventually drop out or request for career change. In this dissertation we present the design and development of a proposed personality-based career recommender expert system that aims to assist high school students to select the best suitable career choice program in Institutions of Higher Learning in Kenya. In order to generate recommendations it applies the results achieved in the personality analysis from the personality assessment test to the knowledge base system. This system contains degree programs classified using the Dictionary Holland of Occupational Classification. The main aim of the proposed model is to eventually minimize frustrations that come with selecting the wrong careers in pursuit of one's career goals. The system stores its data on a cloud server, which provides real time updates for new requests on mobile devices. The mobile application source code is written in Apache Cordova platform and integrated with android. This makes it a hybrid application that can be run on any platform. To test the application, a questionnaire form is prepared and issued to all the students who participated in the main study and they are allowed to use the system and give their feedback. This enabled evaluation of the system usability, efficiency and effectiveness. The test results indicated that the system was able to accurately recommend careers to students with an accuracy prediction level of 80%.