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1 About Atlas Hospital:

The Atlas Hospital at Mohakhali was established in 1988 in a small range with limited capacity. At the beginning it started operating with only two departments ENT and Cardiology department. But with passing of time, and by providing quality services the customer count began to rise very gradually for the hospital. And in order to provide solution to a larger range of patient Orthopedics department was established in 1993, Nephrology department and dental in 1995. A few years later Dental department was established in 2004. In the passing the hospital space also transformed from 20000 sq feet to 110000 sq feet. A hospital which started with only 5 doctors now serve the patients with 20 experienced doctors. Nowadays the hospital is enables itself to digitally assign appointment time for patients to discuss their problems with the doctors whether they are or would be admitted in the hospital or not. Atlas Hospital cares for the wellbeing of a patient comes to them and truly works for achieving its mission and vision Medical Excellence.

1.2 Information System of Atlas Hospital:

The information system consists of small and big size of separate information systems like, digital appointment booking system, Personnel record management system, customer tracking system etc but the firstly mentioned system is the biggest information system over the organization. These systems collect, process, store and distribute information that hlps to take decisions by the decision makers. There are about 20 employee related to this information system management and maintenance. The importance of the digital system was felt by the organization after being in problem to manage all information traditional pen and paper work.

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1.3 Input, processing & Output of the selected system:

Input: The whole information system uses different data as input that vary from purpose of keeping the system. For digital appointment booking system, initially input will be inserted by the hospital authority. It includes the departments name, cabin number, doctors name and detail etc. The system is going to have a simple small database with a lot of interrelated tables. The departments information as well doctors detail information under each department will be the initial input in the database. Information related to patient is given as input through forms. On the other hand, Personnel record database takes employees name, id, joining date, job status, salary as input. Processing: After having sufficient input the processing are made. In this portion necessary software and hardware are being used to get expected output. Output: Different types of form, table, report with necessary information granted as ouput. For digital appointment booking system ,After providing the successful commands a patient will be informed about his desired departments information. Besides that a patient can successfully create an appointment in suitable time with his preferred specialist doctor. This system also gives the facility to cancel an existing appointment.

1.4 Technological Dimensions:

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1) Computer Hard ware: Consist of Desktop Computer, modem , printer, scanner etc 2) Computer Software: The hospital management authority use their own modified software

and MS Excel, MS Word, MS Access etc.

3) Data Management Technology: To govern their data and manage them efficiently they

usually use high capacity storage device consists of both physical storage device like hard disk and software like their database system about patients named Patients information database etc.
4) Network: The hospitals personnels are linked to share data or information through

internet (with limited access of front user or customer or patients) and intranet(for internal communication).
5) Networking and telecommunications technology:

Consisting software and physical

devices that facilitate sharing of data, image, file etc within and among the stakeholders. For example, the organization uses LAN (local area network) networking technology for internal communications.

2.1 The Previous Appointment Booking System and its problems:

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The patients who want to book an appointment with a specific doctor will have to book an appointment time slot with the specific department the doctor is in. They can book an appointment only through a phone call. And for that one receptionist is assigned to each of all five departments. These receptionists receive calls for appointment and book the appointments for patients according to the available range of specified time. In the process, sometimes the receptionist also has to give details of the doctors to the patients in order to answer to their queries. And while booking a time of appointment, he/she also has to check if the available time is possible by the client or if the clients desired time slot is available for booking.

The tradional system is costly one in terms of both money and time. To make the system work and running Atlas hospital has to appoint 5 extra receptionists in each of its departments. So, extra costs are being incurred as the salary and wages of the receptionists. The system also requires different phone lines for each department just for the appointments, Regular fee of these telephone lines besides the call charges are unavoidable. These extra lines are required to keep the main lines free to receive more important hospital calls and giving and taking information over telephone to and from a large number of clients is very much time consuming. So, the system was resulting in a large wastage of money, time and human resources which could have been used in other equally important administrative work of the hospital.

2.2 The Existing Appointment Booking System

In the system there is a complete database containing all the professional information of the doctors in each department their qualifications, achievements, specialties, joining date, appointment hours. The new system has uses from two sides. The systems main interface is being largely used by the patients want to book an appointment with a doctor of the hospital. There is another user of the system who can use the system to edit the existing data of the system

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from hospitals administrative point of view named as back user. We will describe the use of this system here one after another.

2.3 The Database

The system has a simple small database with a lot of interrelated tables. About 20 doctors work in the hospital in 5 different medical departments at the moment. To keep track of the appointment time slots, one table has been created for each doctor which is related to the five different tables of departments, but there are 4 major types of tables used for giving input of data described below with graphical presentation-

The Hospital Table

There is only one of these tables in the system.

The Department Table:

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There are six of these tables as per the number of departments linked to the Hospital table.

The Doctors Appointment Table:

20 tables of this type are there; all linked to the department tables.

The User Name Table:

This table holds information about the administrative users who hold the authority to manipulate ( change existing data, enter new data and delete) old unnecessary data.

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2.4 Process for booking an appointment (front User): The user/patient can see the related information of the doctors of each of the departments online and book an appointment with any specific or desired doctor by choosing a time range that has not already been booked. This system will make it easy for the new users to decide on a doctor whose specialties match his/her problems. And then can make the appointment online in a suitable open time of the next appointment date. If anyone was to make an appointment through phone call only one receptionist can do the work for all the doctors of all the departments. Booking appointment is an easy process; all that would be needed is the name of the appointee, address and date and time of the appointment as input and then processing is done through the customized software which leads either a suitable time slot booked for consultation with expected doctor or to cancel the appointment for not matching the conditions by an appointee. Date and time is to be chosen from the specified time range. Within the specified time range each time span is of 20 minutes.

For booking an appointment, the user will have to go through _ steps through 5 different forms.

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Step 1: A form containing 4 command buttons are there. The first button departments gives the detail of each department from the hospital table if clicked upon.

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The 2nd and 3rd buttons are for searching different doctors working in the hospital. If the user does not specifically know any doctors name he can click on the 2nd button captioned Search Doctors by Department; which will take them to a different form (shown in step 2). Clicking on the third button also take the user to a different form (shown in step 2). Step 2: After the user decide on searching doctors by departments the system lead them to the following form

Here the user first have to choose a department from the list box and then in the list box below the user chose a doctors name which enable to change per department name. After clicking OK, the user will see another informative form (shown in step 3) where all details of the doctor is shown with an option to book an appointment. But if the user clicks on the third button of the first shown form, s/he will be taken to the following form as they are perhaps aware of the name of the doctor they are searching

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From here the user can go to the previously stated form by clicking on the Search by Department button. Or s/he may give the doctors name and hit Find which will take them to another form stated in the following step.

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Step 3: This form will appear after the search for doctor is complete containing all available information of the searched doctor

Here the user will not have to give any kind of information; s/he just has to choose if s/he wants an appointment with this doctor. If yes then s/he will simply just click on the only button in this form. If not then s/he will just have to close the form down.

The user can also cancel a previously booked appointment by clicking on the cancellation button.

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Step 4: When the users chose to book an appointment with a specific doctor, a form is shown asking for the patients information

Here first the user has to choose an appointment time slots from the list box where only available time slots will be shown.

Then the user has to give the patients name, address and contact number and clicking on the Book button complete the process by booking an appointment at the selected time slot. And when the user chose to cancel a previously booked appointment at the Doctor Detail from of step 3, then another form will appear where the user will have to give the patients name on which the appointment was booked and the time of the booked appointment. This completes the total procedure.

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So, the whole process is

At the end of the process the patient have a report which can be saved from online stating his/her information, doctors name and scheduled appointment time.

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There is another function of the new system

2.5 For Manipulating Data Directly through Tables (Back User)

All four table of the system may be used in this function. Sometimes some data in the table may have to be changed. The User_Name table hold data about the authorized user their User Name, Password, First Name, Last Name, Their Employment ID (every staff and management at Atlas Hospital has an employment ID) and the ID of the person that prepared the account. This power mainly used in changing the appointment hours of the doctors, assigning new doctors for the job or dropping any existing doctors. One thing that will have to be done regularly is to change the next appointment date field of every doctor at the end of each day as the system can support the data of only one future date. A query has been created to run the function of accepting User Name and Password. If given user name and pass code is correct, the user will be given open access to all the data at the tables which they have the access but not the right to manipulate in any way.

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So the total digitalized appointment booking system has two sides of function:

Figure: The digitalized appointment booking system has two sides of functions

3.1 Pros and Cons of the digitalized appointment booking system:

While trying to avoid confusions with too many forms, the system gives huge power to two specific people on accessing each and every data of the system openly. This is a major setback of the system. Another weakness of the system is that it can deal with only one future day of appointment at a time. So the patient can book appointment only one day prior to his/her desired appointment date and time. This seems acceptable when we consider the advantages the system provides.
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The main objective of minimizing cost of money, time, and human resources are obtained through this system. Using the system made Atlas hospital able to drop the extra telephone lines and extra receptionist. Instead it can work with only one receptionist with a bit of computer knowledge. Moreover the system provides the front users with ample data to make it easy for them to make a better decision in choosing a doctor. This shows that Atlas Hospital really cares for the wellbeing of a patient and truly works for achieving its Medical Excellence.

3.2 Recommendations:
The hospital can keep the number of people to the minimum as per who may have the open access to the database and s/he must have a bit of MS Access knowledge The authority to control the database may be changed over a specific period of time within the same level of administrators Concentration should be given to developing a newer system with better DBMS in the possible future

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4.1 Conclusion:

The Atlas hospital is an example by which we can see what are the differences an information system can bring to their organization. The hospitals has implied necessary system to its operational purpose and enjoy its advantages hugely. In spite of some of its setbacks, the digitalized appointment booking system fulfilled the objectives of minimizing the cost of money, time and human resources.

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