Scheduler for medical
doctors and clinic
administrators
Business goals and needs of the end-users
The customer, the owner of a small medical clinic and doctor service, wanted a solution to the task of scheduling numerous house calls. A group of doctors is regularly visiting patients at their homes, nursing homes, and hospitals. The administrators assign each of the doctors up to 12 patients to visit every day. The goal was to make the planning work easier, save their time, and reduce errors.
The new custom standalone system needed to be synchronized with existing Electronic healthcare records (EHRs). These are real-time records that contain patients’ medical history, diagnoses, medications, treatment plans, immunization dates, allergies, radiology images, and laboratory and test results in a digital format. EHRs allow physicians and other authorized users to access this information instantly and securely. The synchronization of the two systems would allow the customer’s clinic and doctors to use patient information that is constantly updated by other healthcare providers.
The customer also required a handy application to help doctors manage their schedules, optimize their travel to the patients, and provide relevant medical information on each patient when the doctor is on a house call. The application should perform smoothly on a smartphone or tablet regardless of the Operation system.
Based on these requirements, Onix, as a part of the online booking system development services, started developing user flows for two categories of users:
Clinic and other administrators that need to manage doctors, patients, and house calls;
Physicians that need to manage their scheduled house calls, drive to each patient’s facility using the optimal route, and access detailed patient information on a mobile device.
Healthcare
Industry
5 specialists
Team size
USA
Location
2 years
Project duration
The solution and its killer feature
Admin panel for the clinic staff
A progressive web application (PWA) that doctors use on mobile devices
User interface design
- ﹂ the frequency of prescribed house calls, e.g., biweekly or every Tuesday;
- ﹂ Q&A
- ﹂ Glossary
- ﹂ Real life stories
[ User flow ]
User flows of the app
All users log in to the system using a username and password.
Using the application, administrators can:
﹂ add other users (admins and doctors) and edit user profiles;
﹂ add patients, entering their addresses and additional information, as well as the doctor-patient relations;
﹂ add information about hospitals and staff;
﹂ schedule house calls;
﹂ add the info about doctor and the patients’ info to routes;
﹂ view reports of 10 types: Missed Patients, Completed Visits, Audio Notes, Provider Visit Summary, Referral Census, Referrals, Routes, New Patients, Documents, and Weekly Route Overview.
Typically, a doctor logs in, views the route for the day, and contacts the patients to confirm their house calls. Then, the doctor starts the route, drives to each patient, and, once completed, marks the house call in the application. So the doctor visits all patients on their list, using directions from the app, consulting the electronic medical records, making notes, and tracking the number of visited patients. At the end of the route, all the information automatically becomes available for administrators to review.
[ Solutions we provide ]
The project’s technology stack and challenges
The admin side of the application was developed quickly using templates, which also allowed to reduce the initial cost of the demo:
﹂ User roles and permissions (Super Admin, Admin, Doctor)
﹂ Admin panel with a simple interface: add users, add patients, and doctor-patient relations
﹂ PWA: doctor’s login, Google Map integration, daily route page, ‘Start route’
Building the Scheduler that calculates the doctors’ daily routes using various parameters presented the main challenge for the team.
New features were gradually included in several releases of the product so that the end-users could test it in the process.
Core technology stack we used
Frontend development
Angular,
TypeScript
Backend development
PHP,
Python
[ Product scope ]
UX/UI design
Results
The clinic staff liked the intuitive tool for their administrative tasks and the straightforward and fast scheduling system.
The doctors are happy with having the daily plans and routes always at their fingertips. They also appreciated the ability to see the workload for an entire month.
The customer is satisfied with the solution and keeps adding features.
Prospects
The fast-working system may be useful for any institution that sends physicians to visit patients at home or other facilities.
The Scheduler algorithm has potential for application in logistics, e.g., for route planning by delivery companies. Basically, this solution is ready for use by any delivery company as is, but it can also be used as a framework and be customized for specific delivery needs.
The progressive web application can be replaced with a native application for iOS or Android or written in Flutter or React Native.