Clinical Patient Management System Information Technology Essay

Clinical Patient management is introduced to optimize clinics operation. Because of huge changes in management nowadays, management for clinic is important due to the widely spread of technology. This system is proposed for those clinics which are still using paper-based to record down patient record, disease history and etc. This system is to manage the clinic’s operation efficiently. The area consists of the user in clinic which is doctor and clinic assistant. Basically there are no such systems in the clinic. The traditional paper-based management method has caused a lot of problems to the user. This system will help out the user in the clinic in managing the work.

1.2 Problem Statement and Motivation

Clinical Patient management system is enhanced from the traditional paper-based management system that has been using in the clinic. Based on the previous system, the patient who comes to the clinic for the first time is registered via the system. The assistant assist the patient by write down the personal detail in a form. The patient gets the treatment and information about the treatment is record in a file. The system manages the activities in the clinic but the previous system has cause problems to the user.

Problems of using paper to record down the records of patient:

Only one copy, emergent consult problem

Waste time to search the record

Easy to lost record or duplicate record

Waste money on purchase paper

Waste space for store record

These problem are so important is because they will affect the operation of clinic cause decrease of patients visits, inefficiency and increase of cost. Clinical Patient management is developed to overcome the problems. The system has few modules such as patient registration, inventory module, medical certificate, disease history, patient record search, appointment, billing and reporting.

Objectives

The project aims to overcome the problem exists in the previous system.

In order to overcome the problem exists in the previous system, we must determine the problems existing in previous system, find out the reason cause the problems in previous existing system and create a solution to solve the problems.

Investigate on system/user request and define new requirements.

To achieve this objective need to determine who the user is, understanding the user request, verify the request can be achieve or not.

Make user easy to maintain record

Determine what record is requiring in the system. All the records will be kept in database.

Ensure the system useful to user as it help in daily activity in the clinic.

Determine how will the system work/operate and understand daily activity in the clinic.

Project scope

There are nine modules in the system:

Patient Registration

Patient must register first. Patient’s IC number, name, address, age, gender, phone number, specified relative IC.

Disease History

This module manages data about patient’s treatment history and register for various type of disease. It allows doctor to add, edit and update the disease history.

Medical certificate

This module allow doctor to create the medical certificate to patients. Allow user to add, edit, delete.

Inventory module

This module manages all the medicine stock in the clinic. It allow user to add, edit and delete the medicine information. It will show current quantity of medicine in the clinic. It includes the record search.

Backup

Backup the system setting and database.

1.5 Project significance

Clinical Patient Management System is used by the doctor and clinic assistant. The user will feel the system is useful because it has benefits to manage the clinic’s operation efficiently.

The web-based Clinical Patient Management gives profit to user as the user can retrieve information regard to themselves through the internet. They can access the clinic system throughout the internet and those who have difficulties to go the clinic will find it practical.

The system makes record keeping more efficient and secure from an unauthorized people. Only authorized user has the right to retrieve their own information. This will secure the patient’s information. This system has also overcome the problems in paper-based management system.

Besides that, the system is easy for the management to maintain record about the patient and inventory. The time for retrieving the information needed will be less compare to the manual. This will help the clinic assistant in doing the job.

The system also helps in minimize the loss of data. The clinic assistant can view and generate report for the specified data.

CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 Web-based clinical patient management

Medical services computerize is an irresistible general trend, this web site will provide medical information for the client, the user can find out a message they care. CMS provide on line appointment feature, which allow patients to make the appointment through Internet. Furthermore, doctors can manage the clinic daily work by using CMS. (Andrew Ho 2002, Louis Leong 2002, Onofre da Costa 2002).

In journal article Clinics Management System (CMS) based on Patient Centered Process Ontology (Vissers J. M. H. 1998), conducted study and found one of the important trends in business managements is the focus on processes to create value added services for their ultimate customers. This is to get rid of unwanted, time consuming, unnecessarily repeated business activities of the processes and to monitor how value for customer is as efficiently as possible

In the journal entitled, “Best practice Clinic: The making of a good quality management system” written by Dwyer, G. (2004), he said that to be manageable and effective, a quality management system should be easy to manage and involve minimal or no allocation of additional staff, and work in tandem with existing initiatives, systems and structures.

In the case study of Lance Technologies LLC “The web-based system kept track of all patient schedule information. Thus, patients could visit the web service at any later date and cancel or re-schedule their appointment based on Agho Clinic policies. A web-based administrative system provided password-protected access to patient scheduling data to Agho Clinic staff, allowing them to see schedules and patient contact information. The staff also used the same system to manage in-office scheduling as well. All provider schedules and office hours were also database-driven.” (Lance Technologies LLC (2006). In Web Based Patient Scheduling with IVR Backend. Retrieved March 13, 2012)

From article state in above they appears in nowadays all clinics are necessary to automate its daily functions. Furthermore, regardless of the type clinic, owning and operating it can be a lot of work. Web-based system is a technology important to clinic domain because it can help them face the problem of increasing diversity and differentiation by improve their competitiveness, efficiency and provide better convenient to patient.

2.2 Fact Finding

In a personal interview with a clinic assistant, the clinic assistant had explained in detail about the clinic daily operation. Through the information provided by the clinic assistant, the following function has been listed out.

2.2.1 Functions of the System

Patient Function

Allow patients to view the doctor’s schedule. In order to supply a direct appointment way on web. The system require to show out the doctors schedule of working day.

Making appointment is several simple steps. The patients can log in by using the User ID and Password. For the first time to log in, the patients can register on the web site and set their own ID and Password.

Doctors can check and review the Medical history of a patient through patient ID.

The Patients can check their own Medical history through the web browser, which include the patient info, such as Name, address, age, sex, record of diagnose, any allergic reaction.

Doctor & Clinic Assistant Function

The system must provides the calendar for the doctors, to check the calendar and appointment on the day.

The calendar allows the staff to apply different kind of leave. For instance, annual leave or non-paid leave, etc.

By using the system, the medicine records can be checked. They can view the information of the medicines such as Medicines name, Expired date, Prices, Supplier info (Address and contact number) and Description.

During the consultation, the doctor can store the patient treatment into the database, such as patient diagnosis, medicines, drug allergy, chronic disease. After the checking, the doctor will add the information and status in the system. Finally the system will calculate the total amount and print out the receipts.

Through the functions state in above, a list of system module had been arranged out and already writes down in project scope, you can refer it on page 3.

2.3 Critical Remarks of previous works

BioAXS

Adastra

Proposed system

Patient registration

Finger print verification

Make appointment

Scheduling

Disease history

Medical certificate management

Billing

Inventory management

Reporting

Backup

Web-Based

Figure 2.3 Existing system compare with proposed system

From figure 2.3 above we can found that both of the existing system BioAXS and Adastra they don’t have include most of the feature in proposed system.

Many patients need to get medical certificate to rest at home, so the proposed system include the feature of medical certificate management to manage the record.

Most of the clinic requires billing management feature in the management system to help them manage and record daily expense and revenue. The inventory in proposed system can help clinic manage the medicine stock, so the clinic assistant can always monitor on the quantity of various medicine.

The backup feature in proposed system allow user to backup their data, this can prevent loss of data. If the system accidently down, user can through restore backup file to recover the data.

CHAPTER 3 METHODOLOGY

3.1 Prototyping

The methodology I choose for develop the system is prototyping. Prototyping include 5 phases planning, analysis, design, implementation, delivery.

A prototyping-based methodology performs the analysis, design and implementation phases concurrently, and all three phrases are performed repeatedly to build the first version, with user feedback, repeat these three phases a cycle until system complete. In figure 3.1 it shown how prototyping works.

C:UsersKelvin GiottoDesktopprototype.png

Figure 3.1 Prototyping

3.1.1 Planning

The project planning starts in this phase. First, the information is gathered from the clinic staff. Then, the scope, objectives and the goals for the proposed system are set up. The tentative schedule consists of project work plan and Gantt chart is developed.

3.1.2 Analysis

In this phase, we have to understand previous system problems and find out analysis existing system find out their pros and cons. We also have to realise clinic daily operation process to investigate and define new requirements. The problem statement of the system can be defined throughout the observation. It will become the objective for the system. The scope can be extracted from the objective to develop the system.

3.1.3 Design

Database design, where a design for the database is form. It can support the Clinical Patient Management System operational and objective, as Microsoft Access is choose for the database management. The minimum requirement for the installation need to be confirmed first in order for the DBMS in the server to run smoothly. Moreover, the Entity Relationship Diagram (ERD), and data dictionary is create where it will explain the main basic workflow of the system. All relationship between the tables, define the storage structures and the access paths will be known. For interface design, we will regard to user request and make it more user-friendly.

3.1.4 Implementation

In implementation phase is start working on programming, after complete the first version of prototype, we will delivery it to user to testing the prototype, test for performance, integrity, and concurrent access and security constraints. Other than that, testing and evaluate the system parallel with application programming is done. This phase involve all the users in Clinic Management system that will use this system. In this stage it can be define that the users meets their requirement. Once the data insert into the database, the processes such as tests and fine-tunes will be carried out for purposes of performance, integrity, and concurrent access and security constraints. The testing and evaluation phase occurs in parallel with applications programming. If the database implementation fails to meet the user’s requirement, several options will be consider in order enhancing the system.

Implementation Issues and Challenges

Many issues and challenges will be face In develop clinical patient management system. Develop this system can be say like start from zero, require to learning new programming language, new development software and make it operate on server.

Unfamiliar Programming language C# – The system is develop through Microsoft Sharepoint 2013, and it require using C# programming language to develop.

Unfamiliar system area – The web-based Clinical Patient Management system is a medical area system, this will cause negligence on the development of software features.

Unfamiliar development tools – Microsoft Sharepoint 2013 is a new development tools, many useful feature for developer, so require to take some time to learning how to use it.

Blur on User Interface design – Due to the user of the system are doctor and clinic assistant, difficult to design a user-friendly that is suitable for them.

Timeline

3.3.1 Current Semester

Figure 3.3.1 Current Semester

In figure 3.3.1, meeting to discuss the process of the final year project is a recurring task, the task is execute on everyweek Wednesday. Took totally 12 days on choose project title. Totally 17 days use for create preliminary report, start from 16 Feb 2012 to 9 March 2012. For develop the comb-bound project proposal, this task totally used 21 days start from 12 Mar 2012 to 9 Apr 2012.

3.3.2 Next Semester

Figure 3.3.2 Next Semester

In figure 3.3.2, planning phase start from 28 May 2012, take 6 days to complete it. Due to using the prototyping methodology to develop the system, so Analysis, Design and Implementation should be recurring task and start from 13 Apr 2012 to 17 Aug 2012. The system should be delivery on 20 Aug 2012.

Requirement Specification

User Requirement

Functional

Patient Registration

Disease History

Medical certificate

Inventory

Inventory

Backup

Non-Functional

User authentication

Fast response time

Maintainability

Integrity

3.4.2 System Performance Definition

Software Requirement

Development tool

Microsoft SharePoint Designer 2013

Microsoft Visual Studio 2012

Operating System

Windows Server 2012

Database system

Microsoft SQL

Hardware Requirement

Minimum Hardware Requirements

Processor – 64-bit, quad-core processor, 3 GHz

RAM – 8 GB for single server and multiple server farm installation for production use.

Hard disk – 80 GB

Programming language C#

C#, as part of the .NET framework, is compiled to Microsoft Intermediate Language (MSIL), which is a language similar to Java’s bytecode. MSIL allows C# to be platform independent and runs using just in time compiling. Therefore programs running under .NET gain speed with repeated use. Furthermore, because the other languages that make up the .NET platform (including VB and Cobol) compile to MSIL, it is possible for classes to be inherited across languages. The MSIL, like bytecode, is what allows C# to be platform independent.

Microsoft SharePoint 2013

In-alignment with SharePoint’s approach of doing more with no additional resources, investments like the integration with Visual Studio 2012 will enable our customers to rely on existing pools of programming expertise to enrich the SharePoint platform and increase the quality and ROI on their investments.

Can be used to build any kind of web solution, including Internet publishing sites share contents, applications, and data to improve collaboration and provide a unique user experience

CHAPTER 4 CONCLUSION

Briefly this chapter describes on literature review and project methodology. Information for literature review is gathered from journals in library, online journal, magazines and article. All the information is useful to support the statement from the approaches that has been made.

In project methodology, it described about methodology that will be develop for the system. It consists of 5 phases which has been explained in this section. Furthermore, in project requirements, it tell about the software and hardware that been choose to develop the project.

Gantt chart attached is to help to manage project schedule so that this project will be finished on time. Managing time is the way to assuring the project can be finish according to the plan.