Development Of A Medical Information System Application: Addressing Inconvenience In Doctor Appointment Booking

Primary problems in doctor appointment booking

The scenario of the topic stated about inconvenience in doctor appointment booking. Often scenario arises that patient wants to book appointment with doctor for hospitals and clinic; they need to call the healthcare personnel for knowing doctors’ availability date and time (Behm, Culvenor & Dixon, 2014). In case, the doctor is not available at the moment, the patient will need find another well-equipped and service provider hospital for booking appointment of doctor. In some cases, the inconvenience increases with repeated phone calls, doctor appointment booking becomes time-consuming and difficult for every patient (Huq et al., 2017). Therefore, to address this particular problem statement/scenario, the report aimed to prepare an application on Medical Information System so that all the issues and inconvenience can be reduced.

The report includes some primary problems that should be addressed by the proposed new application. Furthermore, the report states about market and competition scenario for Medical Information System. The major factors and considerable constraints are identified for Medical Information System application. Once, the market and identified problems are depicted in the report; the design thinking techniques are utilized to state how the application should be developed. A detailed scheduling plan is provided in the report for identifying activities in application development and priority based scheduling to complete the project in time.

In the existing medical department of hospital often faces the major problem of handling several patients in one work shift. The booking appointment, diagnostic checkup scheduling, patient checkup scheduling, emergency patient admission process; all these activities often get stuck with one another due to poor management skills from medical staffs and personnel (Liedtka, 2015). It is not yet feasible to address all of these activities within certain point of time; when suddenly patients should be accommodated with urgent care. Most of the cases, the patients’ condition becomes worse with much rush and time passed away. Therefore, to address this particular issue in medical operation, an automated application should be developed for proper and scheduled arrangements of patients’ needs (Bowerman & DeLorme, 2014). This concern is of major significance behind the Medical Information System application development.

Furthermore, some other primary problems are identified as often patients look for certain medical departmental doctors such as neurologist, child specialist, and others. In certain point of time, the doctors are not available for taking appointment from patients. If one application is developed that can look for doctor availability at certain point of time; then the harassment for patients would be reduced.

Market and competition scenario for Medical Information System

Moreover, the payment system in existing medical departments is not well organized. The existing payment system seeks for patient identification and belonging persons’ identification proofs. Often in rush of emergency and patient admission rush, they forget to bring the identification details (Yeager et al., 2016). Therefore, payment process becomes delayed and the services are stuck. Once, the identification is completed, the payment negotiation is conducted; the services are charged with additional delays as well (Cooner, Knowles & Stout, 2016). Therefore, if one application exists with included patient identification with proofs; then it will be convenient to incur instant service and medicinal payments without covering for unnecessary delays.

These are the existing problems in the medical departments, institutions and hospitals; the application should be developed to reduce the impacts of the identified problems.

The market is highly competitive for medical and healthcare sector. In medical and healthcare sectors, the market is considered with multiple elements and attributes. The elements and attributes of healthcare market are identified as service quality, patient satisfaction, healthcare personnel performance, service cost and convenience (Aguirre, McCoy & Roan, 2013). In this section, the market and competition elements are considered to provide a brief overview of the healthcare market nature and scenario.

The measurement of healthcare market competition can be conducted with considering Herfindahl-Hirshman Index (HHI); this HHI is estimated as sum of total market shares that participates in the market. While measuring competition of healthcare markets, two additional parameters are of more importance; are extent of integration between healthcare firms and role of managed care (Huckvale et al., 2015). For considering the level of service quality and patient satisfaction, two specific sub-dimensions are considered over healthcare market aspects. These two sub-dimensions are necessity of services provided and skills required for appropriate care. Patient satisfaction and broadly speaking, satisfaction with care is entirely related with health care quality. Johansson?Sköldberg, Woodilla and Çetinkaya (2013) opined that client/patient satisfaction is important part of care quality and it contributes to quality definition from patient perspective of values and expectations.

Measurement of patient satisfaction can be performed with considering technical competence, service outcomes, patient expectations, and perceptions. Healthcare personnel performance is moreover dependent on provided services to the patients (Bedell et al., 2017). The patients provide better reviews against delivered services and this reviewing can be part of philosophical implications to assess patient satisfaction. In healthcare sector market, the satisfaction constraint of patient contributes to perform monitoring of quality and service improvement and the patient satisfaction serves as major attraction to other patients and insurers (Wang, Duong & Chen, 2016). The managed care plans are conducted with aim to convince the administration about providing benefits to medical staffs, convince patients to admit, and provide satisfaction to patients as well.

Factors and constraints for Medical Information System application

There are several design thinking tools and techniques that are applied in order to execute a particular project based on the requirements. The design thinking tools and techniques include SWOT Analysis, Mind Mapping, Rapid Prototyping, Lotus Blossom Diagram and others (Leifer & Steinert, 2014). The selection of a particular tool depends on the type of the project and the choice of the tool significantly affects the outcome of the project. This particular project is based on the development of an application for aiding healthcare support to the people. Hence, it is a digital development project and the most suitable design thinking tool is rapid prototyping (Levick-Parkin & Hanson, 2015). However, since this application is also supposed to be used commercially, a SWOT analysis technique will also be applied.

Rapid Prototyping – During the course of the project, the application will be developed and the proposed features will be added. After the beta version is completed, the app will be tested by the developers to find errors and bugs (Khalid et al., 2015). Then the app will be released as demo version to be used by the customers for testing for a limited period of time. If they find any existing errors or bugs, they will provide suitable feedbacks to the developers and they will resolve the issue accordingly (Koh et al., 2015). Finally, when all the bugs have been removed and the errors resolved, the full version of the app will be released for download by the customers.

SWOT Analysis – This tool is utilized in this project for one reason – this app will be commercialized. The users will need to pay subscription fees to use this app and additional revenue will be earned per each download by a user (McIlroy et al., 2016). Hence, a SWOT analysis has been conducted and the results are shown in the following table.

Strengths	Weaknesses
i.            This app will resolve healthcare response issues faced by patients all over the world       ii.            All smartphone users (with Android, iOS or Windows) will be able to use the app     iii.            This app will be of great commercial value and high revenues are expected	i.            Acceptability of this app among users is currently unknown       ii.            Many people, especially living in rural areas will not be benefitted much from this app     iii.            This will not be a free to use app, there will be subscription fee structure for the users
Opportunities	Threats
i.            This app will be able to reduce healthcare response time significantly and will be convenient for the patients       ii.            This app has commercial value and can be used for earning significant amount of revenues	i.            Market competition is growing rapidly as there are many alternative apps in the app store already       ii.            There are many scam apps that may negatively affect the reputation of this app     iii.            Limited budget is another significant threat to this project

The application will be launched commercially after the development is complete and all the errors and bugs have been removed. However, before that, the application will go through a number of processes as follows.

Initial Development and Testing – The app will first be developed using coding and programming and the proposed features will be added to it one by one. After the initial prototype of the app is complete, several testing will be done in order to identify and address any errors and bugs.

Launch of Beta/Demo Version – Since rapid prototyping technique is followed, the beta version will be completed and released for download as limited time demo version. The customers will be able to test the app and will provide necessary feedbacks. Following the feedbacks, the developers will make changes to the app features on the way to the development of the full version.

Design thinking techniques used to develop the application

Preparation of Subscription Structure – Before the final version is launched, a subscription structure with different plans will be prepared. There will be three different plans for the users – monthly, quarterly and yearly. There will be extra discounts for the users who will choose the yearly subscription plan.

Promotion and Final Launch – Using the public forums like social media, some advertisements will be spread regarding this new app for the purpose of global promotion. Finally, when the development is completed successfully, the app will be released for public in the app stores of the respective operating systems (Windows Store for Windows, Play Store for Android and iTunes for iOS). The download will be free of cost for the users.

Any project requires availability of sufficient resources that must be procured using the allocated budget. The necessary resources required for this project along with their estimated costs are listed in the following table.

Resource Required	Estimated Expense
Necessary Software Tools for Development	$1000
Development Platform from Different OS	$500
Necessary Hardware	$1500
Support Softwares	$500
Promotional Advertisements and SEO*	$500
Licensing and Other Expenses	$500
Total	$4500

*SEO = Search Engine Optimization

The long term plan that has been included in the project is to include even more features in the app that will bring more convenience to the users like online booking of ambulance, online shopping for medicines from the nearby stores and others. However, all these proposed features will be extremely expensive to implement and hence, will require time as well as stocking up of revenue. However, if these features are added, the app will earn a major share in the market and will be able to compete with the rivals without any significant difficulty.

The following timeframe has been determined for the project.

Task Name	Duration	Start	Finish
Development of Mobile App for Online Healthcare Response	243 days	Tue 19-09-17	Thu 23-08-18
Project Planning and Development	41 days	Tue 19-09-17	Tue 14-11-17
Requirement Specification and Analysis	6 days	Tue 19-09-17	Tue 26-09-17
Specification of Proposed Features	3 days	Wed 27-09-17	Fri 29-09-17
Analysis of Current Market and Alternative Apps	14 days	Mon 02-10-17	Thu 19-10-17
Development of Final Plan for Project	15 days	Fri 20-10-17	Thu 09-11-17
Approval of Project Plan	3 days	Fri 10-11-17	Tue 14-11-17
Project Initiation and Execution	166 days	Wed 15-11-17	Wed 04-07-18
Procurement of Project Funds	10 days	Wed 15-11-17	Tue 28-11-17
Procurement of Resources	10 days	Wed 29-11-17	Tue 12-12-17
Programming and Coding for Initial Prototype	15 days	Wed 13-12-17	Tue 02-01-18
Addition of Proposed Features	10 days	Wed 03-01-18	Tue 16-01-18
Testing of Features	5 days	Wed 17-01-18	Tue 23-01-18
Debugging and Trouble shooting	2 days	Wed 24-01-18	Thu 25-01-18
Launch of Demo/Beta Version	2 days	Fri 26-01-18	Mon 29-01-18
Assortment of Feedbacks from Demo Users	5 days	Tue 30-01-18	Mon 05-02-18
Incorporation of Changes Requested by the Demo Users	15 days	Tue 06-02-18	Mon 26-02-18
Development of Complete Version	60 days	Tue 27-02-18	Mon 21-05-18
Final Troubleshooting and Bug Fixing	10 days	Tue 22-05-18	Mon 04-06-18
Development of Attractive UI	20 days	Tue 05-06-18	Mon 02-07-18
Full Version Launch	2 days	Tue 03-07-18	Wed 04-07-18
Project Closing Phase	36 days	Thu 05-07-18	Thu 23-08-18
Preparation of Project Report	5 days	Thu 05-07-18	Wed 11-07-18
Collection of User Feedbacks	30 days	Thu 12-07-18	Wed 22-08-18
Stakeholder Signoff	1 day	Thu 23-08-18	Thu 23-08-18

Conclusion

Healthcare institutions and hospitals face too many issues regarding urgency and emergency care units. Often situation emerges as patients are left unattended until one doctor is available for providing diagnosis and intensive care. The appointment booking becomes even hectic with existing patient management system and healthcare institutions. The Healthcare Information System application will be of significant value to all patients for faster responses, convenient service delivery, and instant payment procedures. Applications reduce delay in booking appointment, services, and even in payments. Medical Information System management does not require more workforce than existing personnel in hospital. For handling and administrating a small support team and an administration team should be employed. The support team should be involved with handling patient calls and proceed to appointment booking. The application will be able to automatically schedule the appointment with particular doctor with specified date and time. Furthermore, appointment will be completed once, the patient attends the doctor in time and the payment process will be conducted in the portal again. On the other hand, the service and payment will be updated from administration team.

Scheduling plan for application development

Based on the analysis, the following recommendations can be suggested.

Emphasis on Client Requirements – The main aim for the development of this app should be acknowledging client requirements rather than just earning revenue through subscription.

Attractive Overall Graphics – The UI and overall graphics should be attractive but the customers should be able to understand the operations in the app.

No Scam – Any scamming agents and promotions should be avoided and only paid promotions in social media should be allowed. 

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