Design and Implementation of Clinic Appointment Registration System

doi:10.4236/eng.2013.510B108

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Engineering, 2013, 5, 527-529

http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/eng.2013.510B108 Published Online October 2013 (http://www.scirp.org/journal/eng)

Design and Implementation of Clinic Appointment

Registration System

Xiuju Zhan, Xiufeng Liu

School of Medical Information Engineering, Guangzhou University of Chinese Medicine, Guangzhou, China

Email: [email protected]

Received 2013

ABSTRACT

Clinic Appointment Registration System is an important way to se e a doctor, and it ’s also a preliminary tool for storage

and management of clinic medical records. This new system was developed using Visual Studio 2008 and C#.NET as

the development environment and tools and Microsoft Access 2003 as the database to store the medical data based on

Browse/Server (B/S) model. The system consists of several data operation functions including appointment registration,

data management (e.g. addition, deletion and searching), data backup and recovery, etc., thus, achieve key research ob-

jectives.

Keywords: Clinic Appointment Registration System; C#.NET; B/S Mod e

1. Introduction

Clinic appointment registration system has been one of

the key barriers for hospitals to improve their service

quality. Especially for those high-level comprehensive

hospitals with a large amount of outpatients, outpatient

congestion is a common phenomenon. Online appoint-

ment registration system to see a doctor has been imple-

mented and is getting popular in some developed coun-

tries. The technology for making an online appointment

is getting mature. Domestically, only a few hospitals are

in the pilot phase in trying the online registration system.

The project is to follow the software life cycle, through

stages of demand analysis, system design, system im-

plementation, system testing and maintenance, to design

and develop an outpatient appointment registration sys-

tem based on B/S model. It provides learning programs

for the experimental teaching courses of “Medical In-

formatics” and “Hospital Information System” for stu-

dents majored in computer science focused on medical

informatics in our school. It can also be used in medium

and small hospitals as an outpatient appointment regis-

tration system.

2. System Requirements Analysis

Demand analysis is the first stage of software develop-

ment. It is a process of discovery, refinement, modeling,

specification and review. The demand analysis is directly

related to product quality of software, and subsequently

poses significant impacts on the design and implementa-

tion phases. In general (of software development), the

demand analysis includes both functional requirement

and technical requirement analyses [1].

2.1. Functional Requirements Analysis

There are two sets of functions for an online appointment

registration system based on B/S model. The first set of

functions are online registration functions including reg-

ister and login, selection of department, date, doctor and

other online booking registration functions. The opera-

tion flow chart is shown in Figure 1.

The second set of functions are data management func-

tions allowing the database administrator to add, delete,

inquire, modify, restore and backup data backup. In addi-

tion, deletion, inquiry and modification are the basic op-

erations of database management. They can effectively

maintain the consistency of the database to meet the ac-

tual need. The data backup and restore can greatly en-

hance the security of the system. Even if in the situation

of data loss, the system can be restored to the previous

version. The data management structure is shown in

Figure 2.

Figure 1. System flow chart for online appointment regis-

tration.

Registration

& Log in

Select

Department

Appointment

Date

Select

Doctor

Appointment

Time

Payment

& ID

Wait for

doctor

X. J. ZHAN, X. F. LIU

528

Figure 2. Data Management organization chart.

2.2. Technical Requirements An alysis

In software development, the system architecture is de-

termined by the functions required. The system architec-

ture determines system development model, development

environment and development tools. Taking into account

the system security and simplicity, our system uses B/S

structure as the system development model, Windows

Server 2003 as operating system, Visual Studio 2008 as

development environment, C#.NET as development plat-

form and development tools, and framework 3.5 as the

system framework [2,3]. Back-end database is Microsoft

Access 2003 with SQL Server database interface to faci-

litate data transfer and post-data analysis and data min-

ing.

3. System Design

3.1. System Functions Modular Design

According to business process, the system can be divided

into two ca tegories of users: the first user s are those who

want to make an online appointment. The second users

are the hospital staff of internal administrators. Appro-

priate permissions are set in the system corresponding to

the different user s et. Overall system fun ction struc ture is

shown in Figur e 3.

3.2. Database Design

Database design is an important part of software design.

The database design is directly related to the merits of

the program to achieve the efficiency and simplicity of

data access. Under normal circumstances, the database

usually adopts ER diagram (Entry-Relationship) to de-

termine the link between the data structure and data

tables [4]. In this system, the link between the data tables

is realized by the field code of “patient’s appointment ID

number”. According to requirement analysis and system

organization chart, our system contains thirteen data

tables including coding tables of department ID, doctor

ID, doctor information, doctor schedules, outpatient reg-

istration ID list, etc.

Figure 3. System function structure.

4. System Implementation

System implementation includes the implementation of

the functionalities of each module and the implementa-

tion of data backup and restoration. Here we will empha-

sis on introducing the impl ementat i on of data backup.

4.1. Data Backup

Data backup refers to storage of user data including files,

databases, application programs and etc for data recovery.

Despite a variety of protective measures embedded in the

system to prevent data security and integrity from dam-

age, data damage is inevitable because of the possibility

of computer system hardware failure, software error,

operator error, and malicious damage. Therefore, it is

imperative to provide data backup and restoration me-

chanism to improve system security [4 ].

4.2. Database Backup to Achieve

The data backup and restoration system are mainly achiev-

ed through the wrapper class AccessBak.

AccessBak.cs Source code is as follows:

public class AccessBak

{public void Create(string mdbPath)

{

if(File.Exists(mdbPath))

// Check if the database already exists

{throw new Exception (“The target database already

exists, cannot create “);}

// You can add password, so the database can only be

accessed with the password

mdbPath = “Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0;Data

Source=“ + mdbPath;

// Instance for creating a CatalogClass object,

ADOX.CatalogClass cat = new ADOX. Catalog-

Class();

//Use the Create method of CatalogClass object to

create an ACCESS database

cat.Create(mdbPath);}

//Compress and repair the ACCESS database, mdbPath

Outpatient

Appointment / Registration

System

Database Management

Modification Deletion Addition Restoration Backup Inquiry

System Main Interface

System ManagerPatient

Appointment

Registration

Appointment

Cancelation

Appointment

Inquiry

System

Service

Information

Inquiry

Personal

Information

Modification

X. J. ZHAN, X. F. LIU

529

as the absolute pa t h for the database

public void Compact(string mdbPath)

{if (!File.Exists(mdbPath)) // Check if the database a l-

ready exists

{throw new Exception(“The target database does not

exist, can not be compressed”);}

// Enter a name for the temporary database

string temp = DateTime.Now.Year.ToString();

temp += DateTime.Now.Month.ToString();

temp += DateTime.Now.Day.ToString();

temp += DateTime.Now.Hour.ToString();

temp += DateTime.Now.Minute.ToString();

temp += DateTime.Now.Second.ToString() + “.bak”;

temp = mdbPath.Substring(0, mdbPath.LastIndexOf(“\\”)

+ 1) + temp;

// Definite the connection string for the temporary da-

tabase

string temp2 = Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0;Data

Source=“ + temp;

// Define the connection string for the target database

string mdbPath2 = “Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0;

Data Source=“ mdbPath;

// Instance for Creating a JetEngineClass object

JRO.JetEngineClass jt = new JRO.JetEngineClass();

// Compress and repair the JetEngineClass object da-

tabase using CompactDatabase method

jt.CompactDatabase(mdbPath2, temp2);

// Copy the temporary database to the target database

(overwrit e)

File.Copy(temp, mdbPath, true);

// Final step, delete the temporary database

File.Delete(temp);

public void Backup(string mdb1, string mdb2)

{if(!File.Exists(mdb1))

{throw new Exception(“Source database does not exist

“);}

try

{File.Copy(mdb1, mdb2, true);}

catch (IOException ixp)

{throw new Exception(ixp.ToString());}}

// Restore the database, mdb1 as the absolute path for

the backup database, mdb2 as the absolute path for the

current database

public void Recover(string mdb1, string mdb2)

{if (!File.Exists(mdb1))

{throw new Exception(“Backup database does not ex-

ist “);}

try

{File.Copy(mdb1, mdb2, true);}

catch (IOException ixp)

{throw new Exception(ixp.ToString());}

Click the backup button in the database to activate the

Click event. The database backup can be achieved as

long as it is using an AccessBak method.

5. Conclusion

The system integrates technology advantages of Visual

Studio 2008 and C #.NET development environment to

design and develop an outpatient online appointment

registration system. Since 2010, it has been used as an

experimental teaching program for “Medical Informatics”

and “Hospital Information System” classes for students

majored in computer science with orientation of medical

informatics in our school. It has led to satisf actory teach-

ing accomplishment. Because of the inadequate teaching

equipment, the functionality of online credit card pay-

ment cannot be implemented. We will continue to im-

prove and develop the system with goals of suitable to be

used in small and medium-size hospitals for managing

their outpatient online appointment registration and to be

used for managing outpatient medical records for data

mining.

6. Acknowledgements

This paper is supported by Chinese Medicine Streng-

thened Province Research Project of Guangdong Prov-

ince Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine,

China (20111232), and Guangdong Province Social De-

velopment Field Technology Project of Guangdong Pro-

vincial Department of Science and Technology, China

(201102).

REFERENCES

[1] H. F. Zhang, “Software Engineering,” Tsinghua Univer-

sity Press, Beijing, 2007, pp. 10-15

[2] Jesse Liberty and Alex Horovitz, “Programming .NET

3.5, O’Reilly Me dia,” Vol. 8, 2008, p. 2.

[3] J. Sharp, “Microsoft Visual C# 2008 Step by Step,” Mi-

crosoft Press, Vol. 12, 2007, p. 2.

[4] S. X. Ca and S. Wang, “Introduction to Database System,”

Higher Education Press, Beijing, 2006, p. 249.