intelligent mobile hospital appointment scheduling and medicine collection

ISSN: 2312-7694

Swabik et al. / International Journal of Computer and Communication System Engineering (IJCCSE)

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© 2014, IJCCSE All Rights Reserved Vol. 1 No.02 August 2014 www.ijccse.com

Intelligent Mobile Hospital Appointment Scheduling

and Medicine Collection

Swabik Musa Abdulla Wani Suresh Sankaranarayanan Computing and Information Systems Computing and Information Systems

Institut Teknologi Brunei Institut Teknologi Brunei

Brunei Darussalam Brunei Darussalam

[email protected] [email protected]

Abstract— Proper patient Appointment Scheduling and

Medication is necessary to manage and keep track of

appointments and medicine collection. Normally, we see

patients coming to the hospitals and health centers and filling

out registration forms and waits for the response for an

agreed date. The previous system did develop scheduling for

hospital appointment which was purely dependent on nurse

towards scheduling based on appointment received from

patient by tapping NFC card on kiosk or from mobile. Also

the hospital maintains database servers for appointment

scheduling and medicine collection. The system however

lacked intelligence in scheduling the appointment with

doctors. In addition there were no timing constraints in place

towards making or cancelling appointment. The system had

no feature towards rescheduling or cancelling appointment

too. In addition medicine collection used NFC card as cash

card in deducting the money towards buying medicine and

notifying the patient on mobile for collection. The system was

designed only for Android based handset which was another

drawback too. Last but not least there was no mobile feature

for patients and doctors towards rescheduling appointment,

looking for appointments and also receiving notification for

appointment. So taking these aspects into consideration

Intelligent Mobile Appointment scheduling and Medicine

collection had been developed. The system however possesses

the intelligence towards automatic calling of patient based on

priority for appointment scheduling. Also system would

enforce the timing constraints towards making, rescheduling

and cancelling appointment. Last but not least the pharmacy

side possess feature towards serving and declining medicine

issuing for patients too in addition to sending notification on

mobile for collection. The implementation been carried out

using Php, MYSQL, HTML5, Dreamweaver CSS4 and 6,

JQuery

Index Terms—NFC, Php, MySql, HTML5, CSS4.

I. INTRODUCTION

Appointment scheduling attracts increasing attention as the

demand for healthcare increases. Due to the increasing

number of patients visiting hospitals, there’s a high demand

for the introduction of intelligence and automation in

respect of hospital related processes such as appointment

scheduling and medicine collection. This is with a view to

cub on the long waiting time [1][2], queuing for medicine

and the complexity in hospital administration and this will

increase the efficiency of medication/treatment and also

increase patient satisfaction. Many techniques like online

patient registration and appointment scheduling etc., have

been developed [3][4] in order to improve on the workflow

and to smoothen the waiting time but still these systems

have got some constraints towards scheduling.

There are two ways of getting the Medical consultation:

one is Walk-in appointment and the other is scheduling an

appointment. The call in the walk-in appointment will be

received by an individual at the hospital who will store the

appointment details and the request in either a large book

or in a database. The appointments are then transferred

manually to a general area, readable by all staff, or they are

printed onto individual sheets of paper and distributed to

specific specialists or doctors. The process repeats itself,

sometimes multiple times every day.

In the paper based appointment system and especially

where the number of patients are high, there exists a greater

possibility that some patient appointments will be updated

without their notification. In addition to this, the act of

updating/rescheduling appointments is tiresome and will be

a thorough dissatisfaction towards a patient.

The need for new ways towards providing more efficient

health care services, coupled with the application of major

advancements in Information and Communication

Technology (ICT) have resulted in the increased use of ICT

applications over the past decade [5].

Online registration and scheduling [4] of

appointment has been one of the options for the healthcare

administration to avoid the hassle of queuing and filling out

registration forms. This has become inefficient as the

transfer of patient’s data can infiltrated online and hence

the risk of online hacking. More to that, no prioritization

facility is available for the online registered patients and so

there is delay in entertaining them before they are called for

consultation. Lastly there is no reminder system on any

platforms. So towards obviating this defect with the use of

mobile technology, an intelligent agent based Mobile

patient appointment scheduling [6] was developed. This

system allows patients to make appointment through the

use of intelligent agents via the mobile. It may be

mentioned that in this system the appointment scheduling

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has been carried out using intelligent agent on behalf of

human being who also includes prioritization in respect of

Senior citizen, physically challenged and so on. But still

there exists some challenges like the absence of the

reminder system for patients or doctors of upcoming

appointment, etc. Secondly prioritized scheduling was

facilitated for mobile appointments only and not for walk-

in cases, which again brings in a lot of waiting time and

delay for patients.

With this as basis, a Near Field communication (NFC)

based appointment system [7][8] was developed where

appointment received from patient by tapping the NFC

card on kiosk for walk-in or from mobile. The system

however lacks intelligence towards intelligent scheduling

of patients which again was purely dependent on the nurse.

Also system does not possess any automatic calling of

patient and no confirmation of appointment done by

patients from mobile when they come in.

So based on the above drawbacks of the NFC based

appointment system, we developed intelligent appointment

scheduling [9] in the above NFC based system. With this,

now the system here would incorporate prioritized

scheduling based on appointment made by NFC thru walk-

in. In addition timing constraint been enforced towards

making appointment and also system automatically

prioritizes the appointments received. Lastly this system

would call patient automatically based on prioritized listing

of patient appointment for being served by the nurse. The

intelligent appointment scheduling developed [9] been

further enhanced in this research paper by adding mobile

feature with intelligence towards Scheduling, rescheduling

of appointment from patient and doctor side including

cancelling for patient only. These feature been automated

by software with no human intervention. In addition the

notification feature for patient and doctor on their mobile

handset been incorporated too. Lastly system does have

feature of serving or cancelling of medicine to pharmacy in

addition to sending notification for medicine collection.

These been developed using CSS4, HTML5, and

Dreamweaver to work on any mobile handset. The rest of

paper is organized as follows. Section 2 provides the

survey of literature on the subject area, and section 3

describes the Intelligent Mobile Hospital Appointment

Scheduling and Medicine collection developed in this

research. Section 4, provides the results of the research

study carried out and section 5 provides the concluding

remarks.

II. LITERATURE SURVEY

A. Paper Based Appointment System

Paper-based system mostly requires patients to fill up the

forms and submit to the registration desk or they could

simply place their identification card or appointment card

in the box provided and wait for their name to be called.

The question is what happens if the card is misplaced or

taken away by any unauthorized personnel? One issue that

has been presented is that if patient’s records are not to be

found or declared as an unregistered patient, the current

admission staff will delay his/her consultation time. Based

on the survey report published in 2007 [10][11], most of

the complained issues are on the time spent in the waiting

room and in that 19% of the patients complained that they

could not get an appointment within a week’ s time.

Outpatient dissatisfaction with healthcare procedures was

not only associated with waiting times but over one-third

chose to not fulfill the appointment schedule as they

expected to have to wait for long periods. This issue still

remains a challenge in the healthcare industry worldwide

. B. Online Appointment System

Online registration and scheduling appointment has been

one of the options next thought for the patients to avoid the

hassle of queuing and filling out registration forms. It also

inherently gives an advantage for the administrator towards

monitoring and easy searching of any medical records or

personal information as they are available online. However,

it becomes inefficient as the transfer of data can be filtered

as accessible online, and hence, the risk of online hacking

has been very huge. In addition, even in the online

registration and appointment scheduling, there has been no

advancement in the technique towards providing any

prioritization facility and so there is still a delay in

entertaining patients before they are being called for

outpatient consultation. Lastly there is no reminder system

on any platforms for appointments which has been

confirmed by the healthcare administrators [4].

BruHIMS (Brunei Health Information System) [12] has

also made an attempt in acquiring the needs of healthcare

management system by introducing an interactive

scheduling for appointments and automatic transfer of

prescription form from doctors to pharmacists. Moreover,

the system also provides prioritization categories which are

entered manually to the system. However, even though

patient registrations are to be inserted onto a dedicated

server, patient is still required to fill in a complex

registration forms at the hospital. Appointment

managements are still be made manually, whereby patients

have to call to schedule an appointment. In addition, with

the realization in using ICT in healthcare, outpatient staffs

are able to access patient medical records, and making a

quicker decision to lower the outpatient waiting times rate

as it may reduce steps in procedures with consistent

management.

C. Mobile Appointment System

Recently there has been a tremendous development in

smart phones particularly in the hardware and software

utilsed, which enabled the Mobile users through B3G

(Beyond 3G) to roam freely through heterogeneous

networks on all-IP platforms leading to implementation of

Mobile health care [13].

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Based on the above mentioned developments in mobile

technology research was carried towards developing an

intelligent agent based Hospital appointment scheduling [6]

using Android Enabled Mobile handset. The System so

developed eliminates the need of staffs in performing the

similar tasks and admission activities which would

eventually improve the speed of processing of any

unscheduled appointment. The system takes into account

the type of patient in prioritizing towards making

appointment which is based on fuzzy rules and constraints.

The system also possesses facility for seeing the list of

appointments from doctor ’ s handset and patient’s

handset. In addition, systems also possess facility for

sending appointment confirmation.

However, system application was inconclusive whereby

there was no reminder sending possibility for patients or

doctors towards the upcoming appointment. Also

prioritized scheduling was suited for mobile patient

appointment only and not for walk-in patients which again

puts a lot of waiting time and delay for patients. So

accordingly the Near Field Communication (NFC) based

mobile appointment system was developed [7][8] where

scheduling for hospital appointment and medicine

collections were purely dependent on the nurse towards

scheduling it from the system, based on appointment

received from patient, by tapping the NFC card on kiosk or

from mobile. This developed system however lacked

intelligence usage towards prioritizing the appointment

automatically and also no timing constraint towards

making appointment. In addition no automatic call by the

system based on list of scheduled appointment. So with this

as basis NFC based intelligent appointment scheduling

system [9] was developed which overcome above

weakness. The system developed has been further

enhanced by adding more intelligence and automation

towards rescheduling, cancelling of appointment from

doctor and patient side without need for human nurse at the

hospital side. Lastly intelligence in sending notification to

mobile user on their handset towards appointment,

medicine collection and so forth. The details explained in

forthcoming section.

III. MOBILE INTELLIGENT HOSPITAL APPOINTMENT

SCHEDULING SYSTEM

Having discussed in detail about some of earlier

appointment scheduling systems and their weaknesses,

NFC based intelligent appointment scheduling system been

developed [Suresh and Musa 2014]. The proposed system

is an improvement over NFC based mobile appointment

system [7][8] where patient taps the NFC appointment card

on kiosk and then the appointment is made. The nurse on

receiving the appointment prioritizes the patient based on

age and disease type for doctor’s consultation. The main

weakness of the system, as mentioned, is that prioritization

is not automated and is dependent on nurse only who

prioritizes based on age and disease type. In addition no

timing constraint is involved towards making appointment.

All these motivated towards improving the NFC based

appointment system by adding intelligence towards

appointment scheduling.

In the current NFC based intelligent appointment

scheduling system developed [9], the patient on tapping

NFC card at the appointment kiosk is provided with timing

slot to make appointment which takes into consideration

time at which card was tapped. A time window between 15

to 30 minutes is given for making appointment using kiosk

and for patients confirming appointment made via mobile.

We have made an assumption of minimum of 15 to

maximum of 30 minutes time window for making an

appointment. This assumption is based on fact that the

system would then prioritize the patient list for nurse to

view towards calling. Second improvement is the patient

got the option to select the available doctors in the

appointment slot while making appointment too. Thirdly

once all appointments received, the system automatically

prioritizes the appointments based on age and profile of

each patient and not looking into disease type. In addition

the system also allots the patient to the respective doctors

for consultation too. Fourthly after the system prioritizes,

list of patients and order in which they would be served is

also displayed on LCD display system of the hospital. Now

the prioritized patient list is accessible by the nurse towards

automatic calling of patient towards payment before

sending to the respective doctor allotted by the system for

consultation. The doctor on the other hand gets the list of

patients with their appointment id for consultation based on

same prioritization.

The current NFC based intelligent appointment scheduling

developed [9] is been further enhanced by adding the

mobile feature towards making appointment with

intelligence where there might be patients who would want

to make appointment from mobile but still confirmation of

appointment need to be done by tapping NFC card at

appointment kiosk 15-30 minutes before appointment slot.

Secondly the system got intelligence towards rescheduling

appointment from mobile for doctor side where system

would automatically reschedule to next day as specified but

still looking into schedule of other doctor „s too. Similarly

rescheduling and cancellation of appointment for patient

from mobile is added too where intelligence exist in system

towards rescheduling to same doctor or to any doctor again

looking into doctor‟s schedule and so. Also patient is

given provision to cancel appointment from mobile too.

The need for nurse to reschedule or cancel appointment is

completely removed unless in circumstances where patient

after coming to hospital decides to reschedule or cancel it.

In terms of medicine collection, system send automatic

notification to patient‟s mobile for medicine collection

towards due date. Similar notifications sent for upcoming

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appointments and so for doctor and patient‟s too. Lastly

towards collecting medicine at pharmacist, in situations

where patient does not turn up after calling for more than 3

times, a message sent to patient‟s mobile to collect

medicine at any nearby pharmacy rather than coming again

to the hospital for collecting too. This information sent to

all pharmacists for enabling the patient to collect it without

wasting much time. The architecture of Mobile Intelligent

hospital appointment scheduling is shown in Fig.1. Fig.2

shows the Context diagram of the system. In the system all

devices are connected to one local database, which

contains:

Patient lists from NFC reader device, including date and

time the NFC Card come in contact.

Patient basic information.

List of confirmed appointments for nurses, doctors and

pharmacists.

List of new appointments, which have been entered by

patients from mobile website application and from the

Kiosk.

Patient and health personnel‟s‟ username and passwords.

Fig.1 Architecture of Mobile Intelligent Hospital Appointment

Scheduling

NFC enabled Intelligent Hospital appointment

Scheduling and Medicine collection

PATIENT NURSE

DOCTOR

Appointment Scheduling

Accepted appointment

View Appointment Information

View Patients list for Diagnosis

Context Diagram for NFC enabled Intelligent Hospital appointment Scheduling and Medicine collection

View confirmed Appointments

Appointment Approval Notifications

PHARMACY

Incoming medical prescription

Fig.2 Context Diagram

The Algorithm of system developed been described below

towards scheduling, rescheduling & cancelling of

appointment and medicine collection

Appointment Scheduling

Step 1: Patient registers with hospital from mobile or as

walk-in

Step 2 : If registration successful, patient issued NFC

appointment card.

Step 3: Patient Taps NFC appointment card for making

appointment either as walk-in/ mobile or from confirming

appointment for those made via mobile.

Step 4: Once details verified and authorized by tapping

NFC card, patient be shown time slot available for

appointment

Step 4b: Patient allowed making appointment or

confirming appointment up to maximum time window of

15 to 30 minutes

Step4: If time window of 15 to 30 minutes is exceeded,

patient cannot make/ confirm appointment for current time

slot and has to make appointment in next available slot

Step 5: Once time slot selected, patient has choice to select

the preferred doctor too

Step 6: Once all details selected, appointment sent to

hospital server for recording

Step 7: Once time window has expired, the hospital

server would use the software intelligence in prioritizing

the patients who made appointment based on their profile

in the following order:

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Disabled

Elderly

Pregnant

Infant

Normal

Step 8: Once prioritized, the patient serving order be

displayed based on priority and nurse would call patient

according to the order for being served and sent to doctor

for consultation

Step 9: Doctor after serving the patient according to

prioritized listing are then sent to pharmacy for medicine

collection

Rescheduling Appointment- Patient side

Step 1: Patient logs with NFC based appointment id and

password from mobile

Step2: On logging successfully, patient sends reschedule

request like date, time, physician name if necessary.

Steps 3: System on receiving reschedule request possesses

the intelligence in rescheduling appointment of patient

looking into doctor‟s schedule and availability.

Step 4: Once successfully rescheduled, patient sent

confirmation on reschedule to mobile handset.

Cancelling Appointment- Patient side

Step 1: Patient logs with NFC based appointment id and

password from mobile

Step2: On logging successfully, patient sends cancellation

request

Steps 3: System on receiving cancellation request cancels

appointment.

Step 4: Once successfully cancelled, patient sent

confirmation on cancellation to mobile handset.

Rescheduling Appointment- Doctor side

Step 1: Doctor logs with id and password from mobile or

computer

Step2: On logging successfully, doctor can view the

appointment towards reschedule

Steps 3: On sending rescheduling request, System

possesses the intelligence in rescheduling doctor

appointment to next available date and time

Step 4: Once successfully rescheduled, doctor and patient

sent confirmation on reschedule to mobile handset

Medicine Collection- Pharmacist side

Step 1: Patient after seeing doctor towards consultation

sends the prescription with details electronically to

pharmacist.

Step 2: Pharmacist on receiving the prescription be called

for collecting medicine by displaying the NFC id of patient

on LCD panel in order in which prescription was received.

Step 3: If patient for collecting medicine does not turn up

after calling 3 times by pressing buzzer, the notification

sent by system to patient mobile handset to collect in any

pharmacy thru express counter than visiting the hospital

again.

Step 4: System also send automatic notification to patient

mobile handset for regular collection of medicine say every

3 months or so.

IV. IMPLEMENTATION OF MOBILE INTELLIGENT HOSPITAL

APPOINTMENT SCHEDULING SYSTEM

The implementation of Mobile Intelligent Hospital

appointment scheduling system been carried out using

MYSQL with WAMP server and PHP. The database

system is developed using MySQL which is an open source

application owned and managed by Sun Microsystems and

acquired by the Oracle Cooperation. The web side scripting

been carried out using PHP, a popular general purpose

scripting language.CS6 used for mobile side development

to be compatible with all mobile handsets.

In our implementation NFC device was simulated and not

real hardware was used. The primary reason is that there

already exists a NFC based Mobile appointment system

[7][8] where the NFC reader was interfaced with hospital

appointment database to make appointment. The system

however lacked facility for patient to see list of

appointment slots to choose and no automatic

prioritization. So with that as basis we here have simulated

NFC side as our research more towards intelligent

appointment scheduling based on previous system rather

than building NFC based Mobile appointment system

again.

Let us consider hospital appointment scheduling scenario

for walk-in patient appointment. Now before making

appointment, walk-in patient got to be registered which

nurse does as shown in Fig.3

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Fig.3 Patient Registration- Walk-in Patient

Once patient registered successfully, patient is issued with

NFC based appointment id.

Now towards making appointment for walk-in patient,

patient taps the NFC enabled appointment id in the NFC

based kiosk as shown in Fig.4. Once appointment card is

tapped, appointment kiosk will show the respective time

slots which takes into account the time at which card was

tapped. In here we impose a constraint towards making

appointment which is 30 minutes and failing which next

available appointment slot is shown as shown in Fig.4.

Once time slot is selected, the available doctors shown for

selection which is optional anyway as shown in Fig.5.

Fig.6 shows appointment confirmed with appointment

details sent to Hospital server. In this system if patient past

15 to 30 minute constraint, patient cannot make

appointment. In Fig.7, we see that patient past 15 to 30

minute constraint for 8:30-12:00 p.m time slot and so

accordingly patient can make appointment for next time

slot available only which is 2:00-4:00 p.m.

Fig.4 NFC Tapping and Appointment Time slots

Fig.5 Doctor Selection

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Fig. 6 Appointment Confirmation

Fig.7 Appointment Slot Closed

In here we take as case five patients who are making appointment

for 8:30 a.m -12:00 noon time slot as shown in Fig.3. We here

have patients with varied profiles like Disabled, Senior citizen,

Pregnant, Infants and Normal patient who making appointment

using NFC appointment card at kiosk. The software based

appointment system accepts all appointment up until 30 minutes

before the start of appointment time slot and failing which next

appointment slot shown. Once all appointments received, software

based appointment system possess the intelligence towards

prioritizing all appointment received by pulling the profile of

registered patients from database and accordingly prioritized in the

order as Disabled, Senior Citizen, Pregnant, Infants, Normal

patient which is shown in Fig. 8. The prioritized patient listing is

available on nurse computer to call the patient now.

Fig.8 Prioritized Patient Listing

Once patients prioritized, patients sitting will be notified

the sequence in which patients going to be called on the

LCD Display system. We assume here that there would be

most probably 3 to 4 nurses operating towards calling

patient to take payment before sending to doctor. So

accordingly nurse would select the patient 1 from

prioritized listing and accordingly system would show the

appointment id of patient being served on the counter as

shown in Fig.9. Once the first patient selected, the other

nurse counter would see the remaining patients only for

serving and not the one being served. In here you see

Patient appointment id 220 i.e Edward is being called by

counter 04 nurse for serving and next nurse counter nurses

would see remaining patients as shown in Fig.10.

Fig. 9 Appointment Id with Counter- LCD display

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Fig.10 Patient Listing for Serving- Nurse Side

Now before patients served by nurse, prioritized patient

listing sent to doctors on duty towards medical

consultation. The software here possess intelligence

towards forming combination of prioritized & normal

patient listing to each doctor on duty once appointment

made from NFC kiosk so the order in which patients served

are according to same priority only as in nurse side and

accordingly waiting time reduced. In addition against each

doctor office the order in which prioritized patients with

appointment id going to be called is displayed. This

information sent to doctor system too. But the doctor gets

clearance for calling the patient once served by nurse and

payment made. This doctor sees in his system against the

patient as “Serve” being activated as shown in Fig.11. On

clicking Serve, patients see the appointment id flashed on

LCD display system against doctor office for meeting.

Fig.11 Patient for Serving- Doctor Side

On serving the patients, doctor would get an interface for

recording the medical history and prescription for

pharmacy for issuing medicine to patient too as shown in

Fig.12. These details recorded against Patient profile in

database.

At Pharmacist side, patient details sent along with

appointment id for serving as First come First serve basis

once doctor consulation over and details recorded in

database. So accordingly patient appointment id diplayed

on LCD for collecting medicine by pressing serve button

by pharmacist as shown in Fig. 13.

Fig.12 Doctor interface- Medical Consultation

Fig.13 Patient Serving- Pharmacist side

In addition to making appointment, medical consultation

and medicine collection for walk-in patient, the software

here possess the interface for nurse towards rescheduling

appointment for patient on request by doctor or by patient

itself as shown in Fig.14. Lastly the system also got

interface towards scheduling duty roster for nurses, doctors

and pharmacist as shown in Fig.15 by the administrator or

by nurse as appropriate. In addition , nurse and doctor can

view patient medical history too from the system.

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Fig.14 Reschedule Patient Appointment- Nurse Interface

Fig.15 Scheduling Duty Roster

We have seen so far for walk-in patient appointment and

would see in forthcoming section on how patient can make

appointment from mobile and so forth.

Let us consider a situation where patient wants to make

appointment from mobile rather than walk-in to hospital. In

such situation, registered patient logs into mobile using

NFC id as user name and password as shown in Fig.16.

Once registered successfully, patient can make

appointment as shown in Fig.17 by specifying date, time

and name of physician too. Once all details given, the

mobile handset interacts with software of hospital towards

making appointment by giving appointment id as shown in

Fig.18. But still patient needs to confirm the appointment

using NFC ID in NFC Kiosk of hospital on the

appointment day as shown in Fig.4 with timing constraint

of 15 to 30 minutes before appointment time slot.

Fig.16 Mobile Patient- Logging

Fig.17 Mobile Patient Appointment

Fig.18 Appointment ID Confirmation

In addition to making appointment, patient also from

mobile towards receiving notification on mobile handset

like upcoming appointment, collection of medicine from

pharmacy as shown in Fig.19.

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Fig.19 Notifications on Mobile- Patient side

In addition Patient also can reschedule appointment from

mobile too. Fig.20 shows the list of appointment on mobile

for patient. On selecting the appropriate appointment id,

patient is given the option to reschedule the appointment to

next convenient date as shown in Fig.20. These details sent

to software of hospital scheduling system which got

intelligence to look if there are free slots available for

rescheduling appointment to next available date and time.

If slots available, appointment rescheduled and information

sent to mobile handset with appointment id as shown in

Fig.21.

Fig.20 Patient Appointment- Reschedule from Mobile

Fig.21 Appointment Rescheduled

Lastly patient on his mobile handset receive notification

from pharmacy to collect medicine in addition to upcoming

notification. This notification from pharmacy is for two

scenarios- One scenario for regular medicine collection.

The second scenario is where patient after medical

consultation, their prescription details sent to pharmacy for

collection. On calling the patient three times for collecting

medicine if patient does not turn up, system automatically

send notification to patient mobile to collect in any

pharmacy as shown in Fig.23 and this information sent to

other pharmacy of hospital too.

Fig.23 Collection of Medicine Notification- Patient Mobile

We see now as how doctor from mobile handset can

reschedule appointments and also incoming appointments

through software without having nurse to do it for doctor.

In terms of incoming appointments and reschedule of

appointment, doctors logs into system with their username

and password. Once logged successfully, doctor view the

incoming appointments as shown in Fig. 24.

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Fig.24 Incoming appointment- Doctor Mobile

In terms of reschedule appointment, doctor view their

appointment and accordingly got option to reschedule as

shown in Fig.25. On reschedule, the details sent to software

scheduling system of hospital which looks into available

free dates and time by referring to duty roster of other

doctors for rescheduling appointment as shown in Fig. 26.

Once rescheduled, the notification sent to patient‟s mobile

too.

Fig.25 Rescheduling Appointment- Doctor Mobile

Fig.26 Rescheduled Appointment Confirmation

V. CONCLUSION & FUTURE WORK

So to conclude, the research work in hospital scheduling

system presented face some of the challenges that currently

patient and staff alike were poorly executed and inefficient

scheduling systems are concerned. For refining the core

operations in outpatient clinics in respect of health

applications, paper-based methods were used which

resulted in low quality and efficiency as well as longer

waiting times for both scheduled and walk-in patients.

With the advent of ICT, lot of online appointment

scheduling system has been developed but still faces some

challenges. There has also been work reported on using

Intelligent Agent towards patient appointment using

Android mobile handset which uses fuzzy preferences for

appointment scheduling. Also there has been work on

BruHIMS by Government of Brunei on Electronic medical

record which has been further improvised by developing

NFC based patient appointment system. These two were

motivation toward our Intelligent Mobile Hospital

Appointment Scheduling and Medicine Collection system

which is believed to improve the performance focusing on

the critical component. It is proven that those technologies

can be used to replace manual and traditional systems in

appointment scheduling and outpatient records. This

system will centralize scheduling system and sorting the

prioritization. The architecture of developed system been

presented followed by Algorithm and technologies used in

this solution presented as screenshots.

In Future, the system could be further enhanced by

intelligently scheduling for normal patient thereby still

more reducing waiting time. Secondly system could also

check the availability of medicine before calling patient

for collection and so forth. Also the system can also have

feature towards electronically authorising towards

collection medicine in any other hospital if medicine not

available in current clinic or hospital. The system can be

made cloud enabled which enables storing the

appointment, medicine and health record details in

distributed cloud server than centralised cloud server. Last

but not least system can also be extended to look into

Quality of service and security issues in cloud while storing

patient appointment and medicine details.

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[2.] E. P Fung, Patient Waiting Time for General Cases at

Bandar Seri Begawan Health Centre. Brunei

International Medical Journal, Vol.9, pp. 366-371,

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