Abstract:
"Public health services are considered the lifeblood of a country’s general wellbeing. Sri
Lanka as a developing country has been performing well on a regional stage, but it had
always been having challenges thrown at it. Sri Lanka has had a rich history of serving the
public with proper care, but as the times passed, the healthcare services in the country hit
a deteriorating note. A count of issues such as, lack of funding for public health services,
lack of resources and inefficiency in making timely decisions were the key reasons for the
major drawbacks.
The project focuses on how people who are dependent on the public healthcare services
sector of the country could benefit themselves saving time and having a better
understanding on conditions patients could probably be diagnosed with. This way the
application helps the patient gain more knowledge on possible conditions and guide
themselves to reach the appropriate medical consultations as well. The symptom checker,
the key functionality of the application was focused to be developed in a way it suits the
local population than the existing solutions available in foreign countries. The key findings
for implementing the prototype is, the range of suitable diseases to be utilised for
predictions, the medicinal aspect that was required to be covered and how feasible it is to
implement an application to solve the above problem. After validation of the idea
considering different aspects it indicated it is a timely solution to work on, hence, designing
the solution as a mobile application to maximise on the usability and functionality of
‘Symptomdoc’.
The solution was evaluated by domain experts and few non-experts to identify the validity
and practicality of the effort in order to bring the most to the users of the application to
help stand as a bridge connecting the gaps in public healthcare services
