ABSTRACT
The explosive growth of unstructured data in the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) in Nigeria has given rise to the lack of an appropriate data storage mechanism to house data in the Scheme. This paper x-rayed these data storage challenges with a view to implementing a storage mechanism that can handled large volume and different formats of data in the Scheme. The NHIS is currently using the paper-based, file and cabinet data storage system with some of the data stored in the form of PDF, Excel and image files on the computer system. This has led to serious challenges ranging from the loss of data, lack of appropriate data storage facilities to accommodate the data to the delay in the administration of quality care to beneficiaries of the Scheme. Also, the diversity of data with the ever-growing datasets which is also generated at very high rate has also constituted a major challenge for NHIS. This research therefore developed a computer-based data storage system using MongoDB which has full index support, replication, high availability and auto-sharding. The design was done with Enterprise Application Diagrams and implemented using Java Programming Language, MapReduce Framework and MongoDB. The study shows that there are inequities in the delivery of services within the NHIS in Nigeria due to lack of proper storage medium. This is responsible for the ineffectiveness and inefficiency of healthcare services received through the Scheme. In conclusion, this research has provided the stakeholders with access to information more easily, which will enable them to plan, evaluate, and collaborate more effectively.
Keywords: Big Data, NHIS, Storage, MongoDB, Data, Analytics.
