CHAPTER ONE: GENERAL INTRODUCTION

1. Introduction

Online appointment scheduling allows patients to register online and book their appointments
without speaking to medical staff at front desk. These reduces  the confusion and misunderstanding
regarding allocating the time to the patients. The hospital is going into IT to improve the activities through converting the manual system to computerized system. The current systems used in Buea Regional hospital is not up to date because the hospital has computers which are mainly used at top management level to support automate office system. The staff employees cannot access the computer thus end up storing information using the traditional file system. This has led to the office space being taken up by files. Therefore, the researcher designed Online Scheduling Appointment System that captures most of the work saved in files and make available online on a computerized system.

 Internet represents one of the most successful advantages of the investments which sustained the research and the development of the infrastructure of the ICT. From recent researches made on communication by packets exchange via networks, government, industries and universities have been partners in the evolution and deployment of this fascinating technology.

The possibilities for remote access to management applications via internet enabled organization to make more profitable their main activities and fasten the treatment of large amounts of information. To do this, these organizations are called to observe, analyze and understand their systems to design web applications that correspond to their needs.

Our project Hospital Appointment System includes registration of patients, booking an appointment online and storing their details into the system. Our software has the facility to give a unique ID for every patient and it stores the detail of every patient and staff automatically. User can search availability of doctor and the details of a patient using ID. Doctors/Admin will be having the authority to accept or decline the appointment based on their schedule.

• Background of study       

Buea regional hospital is located in Buea central town of south west in Fako division. Buea regional hospital is the main public hospital in Buea south Region of Cameroon. This offers many services to the employees and facilities to the patients, coming from in and around the region.The hospital has more than five hundred and thirty-five beds and equipped with modern facilities and catering all specialties. Computerization at the hospital started long way back when standalone systems were introduced to take care of routine Local area needs, the emphasis then was mainly on book-keeping activities. Medicare areas were not computerized. A need for an integrated patient management system was felt and an Information System Planning (ISP) study was conducted in the areas of Pathology, Radiology, Medical Research, Medical Stores & Pharmacy, and Inpatient Admissions & Billing. Due to some loops,The project is going to put more emphasis on On-line sharing of information to Intensive Care Unit and wards (ICU), Pathology test result information, staff appointment scheduling Inventory maintenance of medicines and other appliances, online prescriptions, Communications with external world using E-mail and web technology Patient billing, whereby test results can be made available on-line enabling prompt remedial action by staff. Therefore, the researcher designed Online Scheduling Appointment System that enables patient and the doctor to schedule appointment.

• Problem statement

It has been observed that to receive medical treatment in this hospital, the patient queue up to several hours from one unit of the hospital to the other starting from obtaining a new hospital folder, or retrieving an old one before consulting a doctor, to the laboratory unit for lab test. With the manual process involved in handling the patient, most of them waste the whole day in the hospital. Very often, patients leave their home very early in the morning in order to be among the first group to see the doctor. Otherwise, they may end up wasting the whole day without due attention. This situation is discouraging to most patient and sometimes forcing them to turn to non- professionals or even resort to self- medication for quick recovery. Therefore, there is a need to develop a patient booking and appointment system that will handle and allow patient

The hospital system is faced with many problems in running of their daily operations. This is due to some of the functionalities of the current system that does not fully suit the hospital’s activities, hence this case study is meant to be a remedy to those problems. Some of the problems of the current system include; illegal access of unauthorized personnel in the file system due to low level of security, scheduling difficulties in the allocation of tasks duties to its staff and inefficient manual system in monitoring drug supply from vendors. This has led to the office space being taken up by files.  Therefore, the researcher designed Online Scheduling Appointment System that captures most of the work saved in files. In addition to this, the diagnosis and prescription depend on the doctor’s memory and drug of choice. Their brains are often loaded with different diseases, signs and symptoms, complications and various drugs for their treatment and so on. Some of which are very similar. To remember and process these huge information in his clinical work is very tasking. For this reason accurate diagnosis and prescription may not always be obtained. Therefore, online scheduling system will help the doctors to be able to know the types of drugs and medication to give to each patient at a time

The keeping and retrieval of accurate records on patients are poorly carried out in
most of our hospitals. Files may be misplaced; the record in them may be wrongly
filled. Hence, it is not easy to obtain accurate and timely information or data.
This is also the case with obtaining other medical information and data especially
when new folders and numbers are obtained each year.
Finally, the keeping of folder for each patient manually takes a lot of time and
money and some of the information are redundant. All these have net effect of loss
of lives and inefficiency on the part of management.

1.3 Research question

A research question is an answerable inquiry into a specific concern or issue. It is the initial step in a research project. The “initial step” means after you have an idea of what you want to study, the research question is the first active step in the research project.

A metaphor for a research project is a house. Your data collection forms the walls, and your hypothesis that guides your data collection is the foundation. So, what is the research question? It is the ground beneath the foundation. It is what everything in a research project is built on. Without a question, you can’t have a hypothesis. Without the hypothesis, you won’t know how to study what you’re interested in. A research question forms the base of where you are going, so we have to write a good research question. If your foundation is built on something shifty, like a house built on sand, then everything following that will be about correcting that initial issue instead of on making an awesome home/research project.

The rapid evolution of technologies through the use of ICT tools, programming languages and programmers themselves has reduced the rate of unemployment. That is providing employment opportunities to schools to manage their internship process with ease. For us to realize a computerized hospital appointment management system to manage patient appointment and record in Buea Regional hospital, we made use of the following research questions.

• Is the current method of giving appointment to patient and managing their record in the hospital efficient?
• How can we create an online appointment system that will efficiently manage and give appointment to patient through sms alert?

• Importance of the study to the educational community

• Improve Staff Workflow Visibility and Flexibility

It helps to put effective budgets in place and implement proper training by scheduling people to their specific tasks and also minimize unnecessary interruptions

• Foster Transparency and communication

It helps an educational community that is  open  to build a unified loyal front among students and this also makes everyone feel comfortable admitting their mistakes  and open up when things goes wrong.

• Eliminate Scheduling Conflicts

Scheduling conflict is a situation in a workplace where you have two  tasks for your time and attention simultaneously .So ,online scheduling system is important to educational community in that it helps the students or employees to break down their jobs into smaller tasks, encourage team communication and collaboration where everyone takes responsibility for daily operations

• It helps in time management

Time management in the workplace is a skill that can benefit any employee. By learning how to manage your time, you can improve your work life, increase your productivity, lower your stress and build a positive work-life balance.

• Increase students satisfaction

Online scheduling system is very important to education community because it  helps in the dynamic expansion of online teaching and learning has been boosted significantly by the rapid development of the internet and various web resources, having a tremendous impact on the quality of teaching and learning added that due to the  use of information technology for education purpose, innovative and advance ways of communication came in to being, which change the preference of students from traditional learning to distance learning.

• Reducing mistakes

Online appointment system is important to education community because it helps us optimize or to correct our work environment, focus on one tasks at a time create, details process document

1.5 Research hypothesis

Hypothesis is defined as a statement that explains or makes generalization about a set of facts or principles, usually forming for possible experiment to confirm it viability. For us to be able to realize the above-mentioned objectives, the following research hypotheses were set.

• A new method of giving appointment to patient can be introduce by using ICT technology to handle this problem
• An introduction of an online system that will notify and signal a patient about his/her appointment with the doctor.
• With the use of PHP and other programming languages it is possible to create, a system which will manage patients record online efficiently.

2. Objectives of the study

Oxford Dictionary defines objective as a goal or aim. As any other project, our patient appointment management application has many objectives which are classified into two categories.

2.1 General Objectives

The main objective of the study is to design an Android Application that
eliminates patient waiting time by organizing activities and allocating task in various section of the hospital.

6.2 Specific Objectives

The specific objectives of the study are;

1. To investigate on the problems that arises from the existing system.

2 To implement and test on the new system.

3. To provide a platform to book appointment remotely and integrate sms alert
   notification to remind patients and doctors of the status of their appointments