BUILD HOSPITAL APPOINTMENT SERVICE FOR MOBILE HEALTH

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1 BUILD HOSPITAL APPOINTMENT SERVICE FOR MOBILE HEALTH Harsha Kanthi I 1, Dr. Rashmi Rachh 2 1 Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Visvesvaraya Technological University, Belagavi, Karnataka, India 2 Faculty in Deparment of Computer Science and Engineering, Visvesvaraya Technological University, Belagavi, Karnataka, India Abstract: Keeping the unfilled dots in healthcare and advancements in mobile technologies in mind, this paper focuses on appointment scheduling system and e-prescription.scheduling appointment is a tedious process. Speciality care clinics mainly utilize appointment scheduling system. When attending hospital, patients face challenges to see appropriate specialist doctors. In this paper, we are presenting a mobile application for scheduling appointment and e-prescription process using cloud platform. Keywords: Appointment scheduling, Mobile application, Google Cloud, e-prescription. I. INTRODUCTION As population of smart phone is growing day by day, it s evident that more and more users want to connect sharing information online and/or off-line irrespective of their location. The seamless mobility provides endless solutions to many unfilled dots in wide variety of industries. Keeping the unfilled dots in healthcare and advancements in mobiletechnologies in mind, this paper focuses on building a mobile service platform for appointment scheduling and e-prescription. Appointments using mobile phone provides much more benefits. It includes time saving compared to paper-based appointment. It reduces waste of time when patients schedule appointment using mobile phones. In paper based scheduling patient may not get required appointment schedule. Patient may have to visit early to the hospital to get required appointment timing. But in mobile based appointment scheduling patient will be able to find required slot. Mobile based appointment scheduling allows patient for 24 hours convenient scheduling. Patients can make appointment at any time compared to making appointments physically by showing up at hospitals, which is done only in working hours. There is significance on the need to change in the way service offered by hospital by adapting e- health technologies in order to reach the national vision of applying information and communication technologies in healthcare sector. In one of the study, it was reported waiting time for patients who attended their disability hospital appointments before receiving treatment was reduced due to enhancement of system they implemented for triage patient appointment [1]. Still today in most of the countries, a handwritten medical prescription is provided by doctor after direct consultation with patient. This prescription is then handed over to patient who carries it to pharmacy for dispensing, where the patient is free to choose pharmacy she/he wishes to go. In such case the prescription is provided in hand when both doctor and patient are present in the clinic. In case if the patient requires the same medicine for further treatment and he requires the prescription again, where the doctor may not be present in hospital, in such situation if doctor uses electronic prescription system. This will help patient as well doctor in emergency. In study there is e-prescription system where the computerised system prescription is sent to pharmacy directly with which the hospital is connected. But if patient wish to go to other pharmacy in this case it s not possible. In another scenario where patient is urgently in need of prescription, DOI: /IJRTER EEX6E 228

2 whereas doctor is not available in the clinic at that time. In this case e-prescription which can remotely help doctor to prescribe medicine. Mobile appointment scheduling has been put up for use in the health care in order to improve the workflow. This study s objective is to add up the appointment scheduling system and e-prescription via a mobile application, which facilitates patients to get appointment in required time slot and doctor can prescribe the medicines even remotely away from his clinic. II. APPOINTMENT SCHEDULING AND E-PRESCRIPTION This section, review the use of mobile technology in appointment scheduling and e-prescription by hospitals. Paper-based appointment scheduling requires patient should be in the hospital, carry on the registration and then taken to desired doctor. Most of the time, patient s appointment cards are placed near doctor s room, and then asked to wait in the queue. Cards are order of first come, first serve. Patient who came first is served first and the last person has to wait.patient information cannot be corrected in paper-based appointment if need to make changes. Complete form need to be refilled. In this type of appointment scheduling has lots of constraints, such as possibility of registering while in home may not be possible, patient spends lot of time in queue, required to follow dates of appointment assigned by registration desk. Thus managing paper-based hospital appointment is difficult to manage, hence need new method. Use of mobile for scheduling an appointment can enhance appointments as it will allow patients to make before going to hospital. Hand written prescription method can be changed with advanced method likewise using mobile phone for prescribing medicine. Still in many countries handwritten prescription is used in hospital. In this method both patient and doctor has to be present in the clinic for prescription purpose. In previous study, e-prescription system are developed where computerized prescription is undertaken where doctor prescribe using his computer, which is either printed in doctors cabin or directly sent to the pharmacy with which the hospital is linked with. This is good advanced practice than a handwrittenprescription, but still can be improvised. If mobile based prescription is provided where remotely doctor can prescribe the medicine to the patient then this would be helpful for patient in emergency if ever doctor is not possible to visit the hospital at that time. If the patient is available in the hospital and doctor is off duty and patient is required of emergency prescription, in such situation with help of mobile prescription method doctor can prescribe the medicine and send to print in his cabin. The nurse who is in-charge can get the prescription and hand it over to the patient. III. PROPOSED MOBILE APPOINTMENT SCHEDULING The aim of proposed mobile appointment scheduling is to enhance appointment scheduling in hospitalby enabling patients to book appointments through mobileand get the required schedule wherever they are. A. Requirement Considering small multi-specialist hospitals where OPD is fixed for doctors where patients are provided medical consultations and other allied services by doctors. To manage appointments of OPD s we need to know the timings of OPD s. In such hospitals fixed numbers of appointments are considered for each doctor. To accomplish the patient appointment request below figure summarizes the involvement of actors and the collaboration among All Rights Reserved 229

3 Install M- Health App Register Log In Patient User Validation Check Availability Book available slot Doctor Get appointment Cancel Booking list Figure 1. Actors and their collaboration involvement among themselves and system B. Features The proposed system consists of registration for both patient and doctor. The details filled while registration will help either doctor or patient to login to the app. While registration of doctor, details are been verified with details previously stored in hospital database so that only a doctor of that hospital can get access to the app. As app have two sides, one patient side another is doctor side. While registering doctor has to himself/herself register has doctor. At patient side patient is given a facility to check the available slot for seven days. Patient can select any of the available slots for appointment. If ever patient wish to check scheduled appointment, patient can check the appointment he/she has scheduled and even have the option to cancel the scheduled appointment. While doctor has the facility to check the present appointment list, patient details and update the details. The main feature provided to doctor is prescription using mobile phone. Doctor can remotely prescribe the medicine and send it for printing using Google cloud printing option to the connected printer. IV. DESIGNING A. Architecture Of Proposed Appointment Scheduling System As previously mentioned system is designed into two panels - doctor and patientt panel. Initially, users need to install the app on device, create an account by registering and signing up. Once they log in patient is provided with facility available to be served.

4 Doctor Wireless Communication Appointment Storage System Patient Figure 2. Architecture Appointment Scheduling System B. Process After Patient Registration To enhance appointment scheduling, app displays a list of specialists and the patient need to select the required specialist. After selection of specialist, system provides the list of doctors for the selected specialist. Patients have the option to select the doctor from whom he/she wish to undergo check-up. As patient select the doctor, the system will display the available time slots. Now patient is required to select the slot and confirm the appointment. In future in case if patient want to cancel the appointment, then he has the option to cancel booked appointment. C. Process After Doctor Registration The facilities provided to doctor is, doctor is able to get the list of his patients he have previously checked. He/she is can get the details of patients. He /she have another facility to check the patient list that is in queue for particular slot of his visiting timing. The main facility provided to doctor is prescription. Doctor is given a facility to prescribe the medicine using the app. He can prescribe and send it to print for the printer which is attached to his Google cloud account. If ever patient require the medication whenever doctor is not available in the hospital, then this system provide the facility to doctor to remotely prescribe the medicines and send it to print to same printer which is available. So here we are using google cloud printing.

5 Start Select Specialist Displays list of Doctors for selected Specialist Select Doctor Displays available slots for a week Select Slot Fill Details and confirm Appointment Appointment is confirmed and if number of appointment for particular slot is full, it is blocked End Figure.3 Appointment Scheduling flow While scheduling appointment list of speciality is provided for selection. After patient selects speciality doctors under selected speciality are listed. So patient have facility to select doctor for appointment. As patient selects doctor, available slots for a week is displayed in form of buttons. Depending on hospitals, doctors visiting time changes, so the number of fixed patients the doctor checks. If fixed number of appointments are full the availability is disabled. As patient selects available slot, patient need to fill some details and confirm appointment. In case patient further wish to check the appointments which she have recently booked, patient have the facility to check All Rights Reserved 232

6 his/her appointment with date and time. She/he even have the facility to cancel appointment early to the day before his/her appointment. V. DEVELOPMENT OF M-HEALTH AND RESULT This section presents the results for appointment scheduling using M-Health app. Initially, user needs to register in the system with basic information required for the system. Before user want to use application he/she must log in by providing username and password. As we have two sides in the application one for patient and one for doctor. As patient or doctor log in he/she will be validated by system. Figure 4. Welcome Page Figure 5. Registration for doctor and patient Appointment scheduling When patient want to make appointmenthe/she have to Sign in using username and password created at the time of registration. After successful login patient have a facility to check the appointments which he/she have already fixed or can schedule Appointment with required doctor by checking doctor availability. When doctor login with his/her credentials, doctor is provided with facility to check the appointment All Rights Reserved 233

7 Figure 6. Log In Figure 7. Welcome to Appointment Figure 8. Show Available Slot Figure 9. Schedule All Rights Reserved 234

8 Figure 10. Booked slot view Figure 11. Doctor Facilities Figure 12. Patient List Figure 13. Prescription All Rights Reserved 235

9 In this framework I am making use of Windows Operating System as it is most stable and even it can run on MAC OS. To implement above Application here Ionic framework used. More over Ionic uses Html 5 with Angularjs which can run on both android as well as IOS providing hybrid platform. For purpose of database MYSQL is utilized. VI. CONCLUSION For fixing appointments in healthcare, normally we employ a human to get work done. But using mobile application appointments are smoothly undertaken. Working in new era of technology, people wish to save time than in waiting in queue at the hospitals. Patient wish to make appointments week in advance. Looking at the challenges in existing patient appointment scheduling, we propose an unified mobile appointment scheduling system that will enhance appointment scheduling in hospitals. In our system we patient is provided with available slots of specific doctor for scheduling. Instead of waiting for long queue only to get appointment. Both doctor and patient will be more comfortable. ACKNOWLEDGMENT The author would like to acknowledge the reviewer for their valuable comments, which contribute to the clarity of research and in particular for their suggestions for the statements of the applications. REFERENCES [1]. Aeenparast, A., et al., Reducing Outpatient Waiting Time: A Simulation Modeling Approach, Iran Red Crecent Med J, (9): p [2] Godphrey Kyambille, Khamisi Kalegele, Enhancing Patient Appointment Scheduling that Uses Mobile Technology, IJCSIS Vol. 13, No. 11, November [3] Hylton III, A and S. Sankaranarayanan, Application of Intellegent Agents in Hospital Appointment Scheduling System. International Journal of Computer Theory and Engineering, (4): p [4] Symey, Y., S. Sankaranarayanan, and S.N. binti Sait, Application of Smart Technologies for Mobile Patient Appointment System. International Journal, (4). [5] Bhat, S., et al., Intelligent Scheduling in Health Care Domain. International Journal of Computer Science Issues (IJCSI), All Rights Reserved 236