Optimizing Cloud Computing Solutions for Enhancing Community-Based Health Insurance Systems in Oromia Special Zone, Amhara Region

Abstract

A Community-Based health insurance scheme is a way to enhance equitable access to health service, sharing expenditures among members and decreasing the economic loads of healthcare on the poor. In community-based health insurance system includes three stakeholders these are the insurer, the insured and the service provider. Most of the Oromo Special Zone health insurance centers, initial from health insurance services to the Oromo Special Zone Insurance centers, are keeping their health insurance data in manual paper-based or on standalone Community Based Health Insurance (CBHI) systems. Reports generated at these services are transferred to the following level using manual reports, Compact Disc (CD) or Digital Versatile Disc (DVD), flash drive or email that result in poor report generation and premature information delivery. On the other hand, there’s no clear framework to collect health insurance data centrally and generate reports for decision making, where this thesis study goals to deal with. This research aimed to optimize and design a cloud computing-based framework solution for CBHI scheme for providing health insurance services with low expense, high usability, and high scientific value. The study will used Design Science Research Methodology. We analyzed various works of literature to pinpoint the problem and hence developed a conceptual model. The scholars performed a survey analysis to profoundly understand the current Community Based Health Insurance Systems (CBHIS) implementation. We identified the necessity definitions, including flexibility, scope and performance, expenses, service and cloud management, IT and security compliance, and trustworthiness and reliability. We designed and demonstrated the proposed framework. The cloud computing-based framework was designed in a layered architecture. External systems are interfaced with cloud-based CBHIS using the Statistical Data and Metadata exchange-Health Domain (SDMX-HD) data interchange standard. The research expects that cloud-based CBHIS will allow health insurance centers and decision makers to adopt information infrastructures and health insurance information technology with low system operations and maintenance expenses. The research endorses the whole evaluation of the framework upon the entire implementation of the system of cloud computing environment.