MEKELLLE UNIVERSITY

MEKELLE INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

Group Members

Belay Birhanu mit/0021/06 CSE

Submitted to:
Mr. Mearig
Submission date: 4 April 2017
Introduction
In the current technology web based systems play a vital role in many fields of studies for a
different purpose such as in interacting customer with suppliers, in social interaction, in
entertainment, and in managing different data for different systems. In this scenario we will see
the role of web based system in patient appointment system which enables patients to get
appointment online and makes easy the connection of peoples who needs service of health
professionals.
When we came to the dictionary meaning of appointment it means fixed period time for
specific patient to arrive for hospital and getting a service, the aim of this project is to develop
online patient appointment system that helps doctors to manage their patients more easily and
efficiently, besides it will also help patients to get appointment and to view their medical
progress where ever they are, they only requirement is to have an internet access. In addition,
it enables doctors to manage their schedule online and also admin of the system manages
medical appointment data of many doctors. This system works in such a way, when one user or
patient is registered in this system his/her information will be stored in the hospital database
and the patient arrives at the appointed time to get the service, the patient information will
never be deleted from the database but only the appointment data is deleted, so that patients
can see their medical history whenever they want by using their id and user name which is
given be the hospital.

Problem Statement
Most parts of our country has no access of hospitals with enough doctors and skilled human
power, but there may be health centers with number of nurses. So the problem is when a
patient arrives in those health centers the condition of patients may be hard to treat them in
these health centers, so that patients are sent to referral hospitals, especially for people who
lives in rural areas this is a critical issue. Although in some places there is a clinic or health

doctors and need special attention. But there is a big problem here. To get a service they have
to wait for a long time in a queue
al history may be needed, but in
the existing system it hard to get patients medical history because it is paper based. The other
problem of the current system is the communication between the doctor and the patient after
the medical treatment. There is no way to communicate with the pharmacist if the patient
forgets the usage of drugs. The existing system has another drawback for doctors also, when
there are number of patients on the queue, this will make much overload for the doctors, on
the other hand, if there are no patients on the queue the doctors will be also idle.
Research Questions
How can we solve the problems in the traditional appointment system?
How can we develop a system that considers the decisive factors between the doctors
and patients and allows patients to book an appointment from doctors while they are in
their neighborhood clinic?
Generally, how can we save the time and valuable resources of doctors and patients?

Hypothesis
By developing online appointment system, the paper based system will be changed to
online appointment system.
By allowing efficient communication between patients, surrounding clinics and health
centers, and hospitals we will reduce the time delay, degree of riskiness of the diseases
and other resources the patients waste while waiting in a queue for getting
appointment and medical treatment.
More specifically, by permitting the patients to get primary treatment in these clinics
and health centers, but if the condition of the patient is beyond these clinics and health
centers, we will enable these clinics and health centers to make an appointment for the
patient using this online appointment system with the help of health professionals in
these clinics and health centers, this will make patient treatment faster than the
traditional system and minimize health professionals work overload.

Literature review
There are many related works in marketplace these projects are listed as follows:
According to [1], appointment scheduling can be divided in to two. These are static and
dynamic appointment scheduling. In static appointment every appointment depends on the
start time of the service, this method is common in most hospitals. But in dynamic appointment
the current appointments are continuously updated according the status of the system. This
system enables any user of the system to make an appointment. So this feature of dynamic
appointment system makes it unsecured because any person can create a fake account and can
make the system busy by making unnecessary appointments to be scheduled. As described in
[1], in traditional appointment system the patients have to come to the hospital to book an
appointment. But this [1] usually ends up with very long period of waiting time and loose of
their valuable resources.
It is also pointed in [1] that users make appointment in any time they want which will not
consider the doctors free time and also user can select any doctor he/she wants, graphically
represented as follow.
 [N.S, [Link], 2014]

According to [2], the advanced appointment system has 6 modules. These modules are
interface module, data riposte module, request module, performance module, strategy module
and scheduling module. Interface module provides transmission of data between users. Based
on [2], Advanced appointment System has a capability of tracing requests and maintain the
balance between supply and demand, the request module of the advanced appointment
system is used to calculate number of patients need the service of this system by processing
patient requests according these three type kind of requests which are booked request,
pending request and discarded requests.
Based on [2], to get an appoint the patient should go through three phases, these are:
1. Register request: - in this phase patient request is received by receptionist and inputted
to appointment system, the appointment system check type of request and process it.
2. Check strategy: - after registering the user system will check the working strategy of the
system decide the decision.
3. Arrange appointment: - the requests are arranged according the rule and protocols of
the system.
In addition to this, [1] in online patient appointment system patients arrive to the hospital
they are appointed in, according to their appointment time and date and no need to queue
at the appointment window. This will reduce [1] direct waiting time of the patients and
indirect waiting time if the patient which intern saves valuable resource of both patients
and the hospitals. [1] Direct waiting time is the time that the patients wait from the
scheduled start time of their appointment to the time that they actually receive service.
 The time between the scheduling the appointment and that appointment becoming
available is called indirect waiting time [1].
As stated in [3], the traditional patient appointment considers that the doctors time is more
important than patients' time. As a result, [3]an appointment is designed to minimize the
doctors idle time. But the design of the appointment system must consider the decisive
factors between patient and the doctors [3]. "The patient appointment system has complex
structures because it represents the patient appointment time in the healthcare center and
controls the patient waiting time based on the type and the period of patient
appointment"[3].
According to [3], if the appointment is based on doctors time, the probability that the
patients will be seen on the time they are appointed is much less, but if the patients book
an appointment on the date they want to be seen, no doubt that they will be seen by their
doctors. Also, [3] appointing the patient according to
longer appointment date which reduces the chance of the patient to be cured. In addition

appointment cancellation [3]. And also [3] waiting time for patient is very serious problem
as it puts the patients in anxiety.
As stated in [3], unnecessary waste of patients' appointment time and the number of
missed appointment cause an impending problem in healthcare institutions since the
appointments consider the doctors time alone.

Objective
This project aims to decrease the work overload of the doctors since the admin appoint
the patients by reviewing the current status of every doctor.
To provide emergency information in critical situation.
To manage all patient related information.
To create automated online patient appointment system.
To achieve efficient usage of drugs after the medical treatment if patients forget how to
use the prescribed drugs.

Methodology
The main tasks that we are going to do in this research includes the following:
We are going to develop a system that connects the hospitals with the clinics and health
centers and also other small hospitals in specified area.
 The system enables clinics and health centers to make request to referral hospitals and
make an appointment for patients those who requires special attention and send the
necessary information including the previous medication history of the patient.
Our system also allows patients to be member of the system once they are registered by
these clinics and can view their appointment status and even they can get advice from
their doctors by using smartphone device or pc, but if they have no access they can see
in those clinics and health centers.
In our system we include a feature that permits patients to ask any questions about the
drug usage and some other difficulties, if the drugs on
their health using their account after the medication.
To Developing this system, we will use html, CSS, JavaScript, AJAX, server side language PHP
and MySQL.

Project plan
Activity Date
Choosing topic, writing proposal March 15-22, 2017
and collecting user
requirements
Getting ready for presentation March 23-29 , 2017
and system analysis
System interface design March 30-April 07, 2017
Project implementation April 08- May 15, 2017
Final project report submission June 05-07, 2017
Project presentation June 06 10, 2017

REFERENCES
[1] N. S, E. Sarda, r Hospitals An Analytical Study,
International Journal of Innovations in Engineering and Technology (IJIET), Vol. 4, Issue No 1,
pp. 1-6, 2014.

[2] [Link], [Link] , [Link] Design an automatic appointment system to improve patient access to
primary health care Proc. 4th Australasian Workshop on Health Informatics and Knowledge
Management (HIKM 2010), Brisbane, Australia, CRPIT Volume 108 - Health Informatics and Knowledge
Management, 2010, pp. 2-5.
[3] A. P. Idowu, [Link], [Link], " Dependable online appointment booking

system for NHIS outpatient in Nigerian teaching hospitals," International Journal of Computer Science &
Information Technology (IJCSIT), Vol.6, issue No 4, 2014.