Development of a Context-Aware Publish/Subscribe Information System for Public Health Service Delivery

Abstract

Publish/Subscribe is a messaging paradigm where senders (publishers) of messages are not programmed to send theirmessages to specific receivers (subscribers). Rather, published messages are characterized into classes, without knowledge ofwhat (if any) subscribers there may be. Subscribers express interest in one or more classes, and only receive messages thatare of interest, without knowledge of what (if any) publishers there are. This paradigm helps to solve the problem of dataredundancy, ensuring that only the required information gets to the end user. Public health is concerned more with improvingthe health of a population through prevention rather than healing individual patients. This is why the dissemination ofrelevant information on healthcare is a vital key to achieving the cardinal objective of Public Health.At present, most Public health information systems are largely dependent on the Internet. This however poses a seriouschallenge in developing nations where occurrence of major diseases are high and the cost of internet is also high as well. Inthis paper, a Context-Aware model for Public health Service delivery was developed and implemented via aPublish/Subscribe Information System. The implementation was done on the .NET Platform. The eGranary was incorporatedinto the model to eliminate the cost of Internet. A mobile Subscriber module was also developed to enable users with mobiledevices access the system.

Keywords: Context, Context-Awareness, Publish/Subscribe, Service, Public Health