Distributed Information System Medical Lab Service Information Technology Essay

Online booking system has become a common trend now days in business organisations. With the coming of the internet everything is just a click away.

As the Private medical care service provider began its quest for the development of a laboratory test, diagnoses and treatment services that would be used to serve over 100 outlets across the UK, it becomes every web developer responsibility to deal with the challenges and this challenge still goes on. As developer took on the task, it created a platform for other and it’s from those existing system that new development are based.

The distributed health care system should be designed in a way that guarantees the security of the user’s data and it should be designed in the most user friendly way possible, putting in consideration all the accessibility requirements.

1. Introduction

Information Technology has created a new domain for business to excel. It has opened many horizons for companies which are looking for better ways to impress their customers. Not only that it has given many options to the firms and helps them in their daily routine tasks. No wonder it is playing a vital role in development of the firm. Research and Development for any firm is very important for future. Let it be long term planning or short term I.T has helped in many ways for example minimising risks, calculating costs, estimating future trends and so on.

1.2-Tier Architecture

Technology is dynamic as it changes day by day making business world easier to survive with excellent management. 3-Tier Architecture is one of the modern technology three way interactions in client /server environment. This architecture was generated to overcome the problems of 2-tier architecture.

This consists of three essential components as shown in the figure.

Fig: 3-tier Architecture

(Source: www.cardisoft.eu/…/3_tier_architecture.jpg, Accessed on 04/06/2011)

Client Tier:

This is the layer where the users interact with the system. So this is the user interface which is stored in client server. This layer sends the data to application server and gets the result back from there.

An Application Tier

This server consist of two layers i.e. Business layer and data access layer. This is the main layer which process the data received from client server and also interacts with database server.

Data Tier

All the data are stored in database server which can be retrieve at any time. This layer takes the command from application server and gives the required data back.

2. Overview

The vast development and empowering of today’s knowledge in all sectors of our modern life is improving satisfaction, comfort and reliability. There are remarkable effects entering in our medical service sector that make the patients and doctors relationship more satisfactory and exciting. However, patients and Medical care Service often struggle with disagreeing views about the Laboratory testing system and adoption of proper communication and appointment procedures. Patients look for technological advances to improve the quality and outcomes of medical care system.

In new developed system, with the help of emerging web techniques and technologies the Medical Care Service turn into a great improvement by reducing early days delay and difficulty. In the online system, Administrative staff can track patients, staff and can book appointment for patient. Doctors will be able to access patient information, their medical history and would be able to arrange for lab testing laboratory staff member will be able to track only sample which is belonged with a patient.

2.1 Scope of project.

The main aim of the project is to create a patients test booking system and manage doctors and staff member detail that is more efficient and easy to use for all. The project also aims at ensuring reliability in the medical booking systems so that in the near future the members of the public as well as the health workers find communication between the two parties easy and secure and time saving. By secure we mean a reasonable level of data protection.

2.2 Aims and objective.

In order to hit the set target for this project aims and objectives were set and this included:

Develop a login facility to access details and information easily.

Create an online interactive system between patients and Health Care Provider for quicker response (such as fixing online appointment).

To design UML Deployment diagram of the system architecture

To design Use Case Diagram of the system

To design ERD of the backend database

To design Class Diagram of the system

To implement the 3-tier Architecture and design the prototypes

2.3 Purpose of the Project

After this project, Medical Care Service will have a efficient appointment system for their patients. Following are the advantages in implementing 3-tier Architecture.

Development Issues:

Complex application rules are easy to implement in application server.

Business logic off-loaded from database server and client, which makes performance excellent.

Changes to business logic automatically requested by server – changes require only new application server software to be installed.

Application server logic is suitable to other database server platforms by virtue of the application software.

Performance:

3-Tier Architecture gives superior performance for medium to high volume environments

2. Business Key Requirement Analysis

The main requirement for Medical care Service provider is to overcome with the problem of Traditional database system. So the aim of the project is to develop Web Base applications and implement 3-tier architecture system.

There are three separate interfaces with different functions for different users.

Administrator

Administrator can:

Track Patients

Enter Staff Information

Book Appointment for Patients

Doctors

Doctors can:

Access Patients Information

Access Patients Medical history

Arrange for Lab testing

Laboratory Staff

Track Sample (Associated with Patients)

3. Model Used for System Development

There are different types of methodology for the development of system such as Waterfall Model, Spiral Model, Prototyping Model, and Rapid Application Development. Among them Prototyping Model was selected for the purposed system.

3.1 Prototyping Model

In this model, the problems of the existing system are defined. The requirements are break down into different parts. For each requirement different prototypes are designed and tested separately. If the systems do not give the expected output, then again different actions are taken to construct the system.

4. Feasibility Study

The study involves a complete research for the project; it looks at some of the features that could be translated into reality. This stage helps project developers to know accurately they can deal with the process. It is therefore a critical phase which requires a detailed study be carried out. Feasibility study is the initial study undertaken before the actual project begins to highlight the possibility of the project success. It is an analysis of possible options and solutions to problems and provides suggestions on the best alternative.

4.1 Technical Feasibility

The project “Medical Care Service” runs on any windows system as well as in World Wide Web. Many organizations use the web server because it is a common and very user-friendly interface to develop ASP.net enabled programs in the Internet. The necessary technologies needed to run this project are available without any new software to be installed. The software ASP.net and Microsoft Access which is commonly available and widely popular software existing in the market. It comes with features to access the Internet in an efficient approach. Thus, by using this all the modules are able to perform the tasks required. The task is to produce a product that reflects the user mind.

4.2 Operational Feasibility

Operational feasibility is the measure of how well the explanation of problems will work in the organisation and also determine how people feel about the system project. In this area particularly, problems within the login areas and security validations that were sighted, A project is therefore said to be operationally feasible if it achieves the needs and expectations of end users. User acceptance is a key determinant of operational feasibility. This project does not require any special memory or enhanced features in the system in order to run. Instead it will consume less memory and will operate efficiently even under normal speed.

4.3 Economic Feasibility

Economic feasibility is the measure of the cost-effectiveness of an information system solution. Regarding economic feasibility, the project is a less expensive one. As a whole, the project does not demand any special feature. It makes use of the available resources and provides a better performance in convinced areas.

5. Languages Used for System Development

In this phase, the required hardware, software and people required for the project are selected. The following software is used for designing.

5.1 Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 (ASP.net)

Microsoft visual studio is an integrated development environment (IDE) from Microsoft which can be used to develop console and graphical user interface applications along with Windows Forms applications, web sites, web applications, and web services.

Visual Studio 2008 was upgraded to support all the new features introduced in .NET Framework 2.0, including generics and ASP.NET 2.0. The IntelliSense feature in Visual Studio was upgraded for generics and new project types were added to support ASP.NET web services. Visual Studio 2005 also includes a local web server, separate from IIS that can be used to host ASP.NET applications during development and testing. It also supports all SQL Server 2005 databases. Other new features of Visual Studio 2005 include the “Deployment Designer” which allows application designs to be validated before deployments, an improved environment for web publishing when combined with ASP.NET 2.0 and load testing to see application performance under various sorts of user loads.

This is used in this project for the presentation tier to design the interfaces for window applications.

5.2 VB.NET

“Visual Basic .NET (VB.NET) is an object-oriented computer programming language that can be viewed as an evolution of Microsoft’s Visual Basic (VB) which is generally implemented on the Microsoft .NET Framework. Microsoft currently supplies Visual Basic Express Edition free of charge.”

This language is used for coding of the main functions and process in this project. This is used for the presentation tier.

5.3 UML Diagrams

UML stands for Unified Modelling Language which is used in the business logic layer in middle tier of 3-tier Architecture. This is specially designed for developers to see the system in different perspective view. There are different types of UML Diagrams such as use case diagram, class diagram, sequence diagram, deployment diagram. Among them following UML Diagrams are used for this project.

Use Case diagram to show how the users interact with system

Class Diagram forms class structure and contents using design elements such as classes, packages and objects. It also displays relationships such as containment, inheritance, associations, generalization, etc.

Deployment Diagram to show the interaction between the components that is relation between hardware and software. This diagram shows the physical architecture of the system.

5.4 MS Access 2007

MS Access is the database application for Windows, included in Microsoft Office suite which is used to store the data in tables form.

MS Access offers many templates which makes easy to use. Many big and small organizations use this software for database server in order to store the data in standard tabulation form and retrieve as required.

In this project, this program is used to store the data in the database server.

6. Designing the System

The purpose of design phase is to transform the business requirements statement from the requirements analysis phase into design specifications for construction. For this purpose, design phase encompasses following tasks:

Design the Application Architecture

Design the System Database

Design System Interface

6.1 Design the Application Architecture

For the design of system architecture the UML diagrams such as Use Case Diagram, UML Deployment Diagram and Class Diagrams are used.

6.2 System Architecture Design

Clients

IIS

.

Server

Business Logic

Components

VB .net

Library

Data Access via

ADO

.

NET

Middle

–

Tier

CLR

MCS

Database

Ms Access

2007 Server

ASP

.

NET

7. Use Case Diagram for Medical Lab Service

8. Design the System Database

To design the database of the system, the E-R diagram is prepared at first. Then, the database structure is prepared in the MS Access.

8.1 Entity Relationship Diagram

ERD stands for Entity Relationship Diagram. It is one of the most important analysis diagrams for designing a database which summarise the whole structure of database.

In relational databases, the data is split up into tables instead of writing it all out in a single line or record. This removes some of the problems often encountered in building a database. The tables are linked together by the primary key of one table being present as what is called a foreign key in another table.

For National Car Parts Retail, the database system main content following

AdminLogin

Branch

DoctorsDetails

PatientDetails

PatientVisitDetail

ReportStatus

StaffDetails

ERD Diagram

StaffDesignation

StaffGender

Login

userName

Id

Password

Type

createDate

Patients

PatientName

PatientId

MaritalStatus

PatientDOB

PatientHistory

PatientAddress

PatientPhone

TestType

PatientGender

PatientBookingDate

StaffDOB

BranchFax

BranchPhonedress

BranchName

Has

BranchId

Branch

Has

VisitDetail

PatientvisitID

DoctorsId

TestDate

PatientId

Arrange Test

DoctorDetails

DoctorsName

DoctorsId

DoctorsGender

DoctorsAddress

DoctorsSpecial

DoctorsPhone

Booking

Has

StaffPhone

StaffAddress

StaffId

StaffName

Staff Details

Postcode

BranchAddress

The above diagram is entity relationship diagram for Medical Lab Service explaining the relationship between the entities and their attributes. The attributes shown in the diagram are their primary keys.

9. Database Structure

The database was designed using MS Access with the name Medical.mdb

List of the various tables and their descriptions are as follows:

S. No.

Table Name

Description

AdminLogin

Store Login information

Branch

Store Medical Lab Branches details

DoctorsDetails

Store Doctors information

PatientDetails

Store Patients booking details

PatientVisitDetail

Store Patients Visit Detail For Medical Test

ReportStatus

Store Patients Report Status

StaffDetails

Store Lab Staff details

Below is the more detail of database structure.

Branch Table

Name

Data Type

Size

Nulls?

Default Value

Extra

BranchId

Number

Long Int

BranchName

Text

BranchAddress

Text

PostCode

Text

BranchPhone

Text

BranchFax

Text

For more detail refer to appendix “Medical”

9.1 Design the System Interface

This is the Index page of the Web Based system for Medical Lab Service where the user logins and does other processing.

This is the Medical Lab Service “index page” from where user can process further.

For more prototypes refer to appendix “prototypes”

10. Coding

Coding should be done according to design specifications in order to meet business requirements. VB.NET was used as the server-side script.

Including entire code of the system would make the system unnecessarily lengthy. Hence I have included code of some important functionality and presented a brief explanation.

11. Implementation and Testing of System

As I mentioned before this is the web based application so the other Medical Lab Branch can be accessed this System through internet. When the system gave expected result then it was implemented to the entire branch and old traditional system was completely removed.

The list below is the test plan for the system.

Add/Update/Delete Branch Detail (Admin)

Add/Update Delete Patients Booking (Admin)

Add/Update Delete Doctors Details (Admin)

Add/Update Delete Staff Details (Admin)

Add/Update Delete Test Arrangement (Doctors)

Add/Update Delete Report Details (Lab Staff)

Searching from Admin(Branch, Doctors, Patients, Lab Staff)

Searching from Doctor (Patients History, Test Details)

Searching from Lab Staff (Search Report Status)

12. User Documentation

After the completion of the whole project the final user document was prepared which content all the information of the system. The user guide was prepared and different training was given to employees of the Medical Lab Service so that they can be familiar with the new system.

13. Conclusion

This report is prepared as the System documentation for Web Based Application Designing for a Medical Lab Service.

This project provided me with good professional practice in applying our knowledge of Information Systems to address business problems. During this endeavour, I learned to write a suite of programs that encompass the main facets of business computing. I was able to obtain an in-depth knowledge of a formal coding language. I have been able to produce relevant documentation in support of the developed system. With the preparation of the projects, I have learned the efforts & time required to prepare a professional system. I gained knowledge about different phases & methodology of a project, which supports both the system development & operation and support stages of the system life cycle.

Hence with the development of this system, I understood the real need and value of having 3-tier Architecture System. I learnt that coding is only small part of system development and that greater effort should be placed in understanding the business requirements. Understanding business need is a challenge and getting application built to suit it is a whole lot another field by it self

14. References

Reference Books

Jeffrey L. Whitten, Lonnie D. Bentley, Kevin C. Dittman, Systems Analysis and Design Methods, Fifth Edition

Roger S. Pressman, Ph.D., Software Engineering – A Practitioner’s Approach, Fifth Edition

Visual Studio 2008 Professional (ASP.Net)

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