CHAPTER ONE

1.0 INTRODUCTION:

This chapter gives an overview on the aims, objectives, background of the study and operation environment of the system.

1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

Appointment scheduling systems are used by primary and specialty care clinics to manage access to service providers, as well as by hospitals to schedule elective surgeries. Many factors affect the performance of appointment systems including arrival and service time variability, patient and provider preferences, available information technology and the experience level of the scheduling staff. In addition, a critical bottleneck lays in the application of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research (IE/OR) techniques. The most common types of health care delivery systems are described in this article with particular attention on the factors that make appointment scheduling challenging. For each environment relevant decisions ranging from a set of rules that guide schedulers to real-time responses to deviations from plans are described. A road map of the state of the art in the design of appointment management systems is provided and future opportunities for novel applications of IE/OR models are identified.

Appointment Management system is a desktop application that is designed to help fix schedule and appointment from the management of organization and the customers, send messages to customers either by phone or email. With this computerized system there will be no loss of record or member record which generally happens when a non - computerized system is used. It is designed in Visual Studio and the database used is Microsoft SQL Server 2005.

1.2 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEMS

There are problems found in appointment which include:

• An increase in the waiting time for appointments
• Frustration for customers, patients and staff
• A waste of valuable resources

1.3 OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY

The project aims and objectives that will be achieved after completion of this project are discussed in this subchapter. The aims and objectives are as follows:

• To resolve Contact issue.
• To Request column for creating new appointment.
• To view appointment list.

1.4 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY

The significance of this study is to help and give benefits to students, staff and school management of knowing what appointment system is all about and the problems found in appointment.

1.5 LIMITATION OF THE STUDY

• Unavailability of academic materials.
• Transport problem
• Lack of financial support
• Lack of Time
• Unavailability of programming software such as php and SQL.

1.6 SCOPE OF THE STUDY

This research work will concentrate on creating new appointment, and other details will be viewed for entry by the student as the case may be, with a case study of UNITECH HOSPITAL.

1.7  ASSUMPTION OF THE STUDY

During the process of data collection, information relating to Appointment Management System was obtained from the Internet (www.wikipedia.com/appointment). The information was collected during the course of my industrial attachment. Hence, it is assumed that all the data collected are correct and contains no false information.

1.8 DEFINITION OF TERMS

• UNITECH: Is an abbreviation which stands for University of Technology.
• Appointment:an arrangement to meet someone at a particular time and place. E.g.: "she made an appointment with my receptionist".
• Management: It is the co-ordination of all the resources of an Organization through the process of planning, Organization, directing and controlling
• System: Physical component of a computer that is used to perform certain task.
• Data: Numbers, Text or image which is in the form suitable forStorage in or processing by a computer, or incomplete information.
• Information: A meaning full material derived from computer data by organizing it and interpreting it in a specified way.
• Input: Data entered into a computer for storage or processing.
• An emergency is a situation that poses an immediate risk to health, life, property, or environment.
• Output: Information produced from a computer after processing.
• Information System: A set of interrelated components that collect (or retrieve), process, store and distribute information to support decision making and control in an organization.
• COMPUTER:-Computer is an electronic device that accepts data as Input, processes data and     gives out information as output to the user.
• SOFWARE:-Software is set of related programs that are designed by the manufacturer to control the hardware and to enable the computer perform a given task.
• HARDWARE: - Hardware is a physical part of a computer that can be touched, seen, feel which are been control by the software to perform a given task.
• DATABASE: - Database is the collection of related data in an organized form.
• PROGRAMMING: - programmingisa set of coded instruction which the computers understands and obey.
• TECHNOLOGY: -Technology is the branch of knowledge that deals with the creation and use technical and their interrelation with life, society and the environment, drawing upon such as industrial art, engineering, applied science and pure science.
• Algorithm : A set of logic rules determined during the design phase of a data matching application. The ‘blueprint’ used to turn logic rules into computer instructions that detail what step to perform in what order.
• Application:  The final combination of software and hardware which performs the data matching.
• Data matching database: A structured collection of records or data that is stored in a computer system.
• Data cleansing: The proactive identification and correction of data quality issues which affect an agency’s ability to effectively use its data.
• Data integrity : The quality of correctness, completeness and complain with the intention of the creators of the data i.e ‘fit for purpose’.