Enhancing Patient Satisfaction on Hospital Appointment Scheduling: Using Mobile Technology
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Date
2020-06-06
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
Implementing the mobile health System is the priority agenda not only in developed countries but also in many developing countries. To make hospital appointments in our country, Ethiopia, a patient needs to directly go to healthcare and wait until doctors are available. This procedure affects the patient’s experience. Since there are few studies on patient satisfaction, we need patient satisfaction study and country based (local) application.
The objective of this study is to investigate and design a mobile-based solution that can enhance the patient experience while visiting Healthcare. This app is aimed to reduce the exhaust patients’ faces on scheduling appointments.
Design Science Approach is adopted in doing this research, which is a process model, consisting of six activities in a nominal sequence. Data was collected based on a survey collected from participants using semi-structured interviews. Using a narrative approach, we interpreted stories told by participants to determine the requirements of the new system. In translating user requirements into diagrammatic representation, we applied analysis and design models, UML diagrams such as Use Case and Sequence Diagrams and Class Diagram.
The result of this study shows that patients satisfaction increases when factors affecting patient experiences are improved such as patients' expectations, waiting time, consulting time, and arrival time. Additionally, in this work community-based appointment scheduling system for patients is proposed. The User Interface of the prototype is presented using screenshots to show and demonstrate the system.
Smart Doctors Appointment and Prescription System has no functionality for prediction of patient consulting time and community concern like no function of location information and local language-based which are the major challenges for this study. Therefore, we inferred the need for analyzing patient requirements and the development of mobile applications that overcomes the problems and play a vital role to provide healthcare services timely, in an organized way.
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Keywords
Patient Satisfaction, Health Care, Appointment, Doctor, Patient, Mobile