ONLINE HOSPITAL LOCATION SYSTEM USING GOOGLE MAPS

ABSTRACT

It is estimated that an average human being will fall ill more than three times every year. People are always looking for different hospitals to solve their health challenges and they don’t know the directions and the route to be followed to get to this places. Without knowing the right routes and directions, this may cause ill persons to get to the wrong way, which might lead to death, in cases of emergency. To avoid this situation, this research is to provide an online hospital location system, developed to help users to get the right directions to different health centers. This paper introduces an application that can be easily accessed, which is implemented to provide the routes, directions, traffic update and see other hospital users reviews about the hospitals using Google map. The proposed system additionally presents automated navigation activities, with providing directions to users with the optimal path between start point and destination and ascertaining the driving duration with distance. Google Maps APIs, Google Direction APIs, PHP, JSON and MySQL have been implemented and utilized in this system to provide solutions. This application uses the client/server architecture, the users serve as the client and the combination of PHP and MySQL database serve as a server.

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

One of the most significant features of modern smartphones are Location Based Services (LBS). Location apps on smartphone can be effectively used and recognized because of a special internally equipped chip that support the Global Positioning System (GPS). Using GPS on our smartphones together with Google map can assist users to easily find nearby bookshops, restaurants, bus-stops, cinema etc. Vast majority of people today utilize mobile phone to explore and navigate easily around cities. Many of these users are using this location applications to find directions, places or other information that are based on the current location. The popularity for this type of smartphone applications (LBS) has led to the development of an application in this field to help hospitals and sick patients. A large portion of this free software do not meet the needs of the users in term of finding hospitals and getting quick routes in case of emergency with the patients. These applications are either for navigation purposes, or to find nearby places or display locations on a map. Furthermore, online map guide applications do not bolster the capacity to allow users add or erase a specified location. This paper presents an automated method to build an online hospital location system interactive navigation map dependent on Google map.

This can be done by utilizing a concentrated database MySQL that exist on a server and users applications (in smartphones).

1.2     STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

It is estimated that an average human being will fall ill more than three times every year. People are always looking for different hospitals to solve their health challenges and they don’t know the directions and the route to be followed to get to this places. Without knowing the right routes and directions, this may cause ill persons to get to the wrong way. To avoid this situation, this research is to provide an online hospital location system, developed to help users to get the right directions to different health centers.

1.3     AIM AND OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY

The main aim of the research isto provide an online hospital location system, developed to help users to get the right directions to different health centers using Google maps, with the following objective:

1. Provide a system that users can access whenever they need to find a hospital in a new city.
2. Reduce death rate in cases of emergency, hospitals can be easily found using the system.
3. Find hospital routes and estimated arrival time with the system.

1.4     SCOPE OF THE STUDY

The scope of the research is focused on designing a system to assist sick patients and other users to easily find hospitals and other health facilities, and the system will solve the challenges of people going to the wrong hospital, since each hospital on the system will have previous users’ reviews and recommendations.

1.5     LIMITATION OF THE STUDY

The online hospital system will be a web based system and can only be accessed with internet connection, users with poor or no internet connection cannot use the platform for navigation.

1.6     DEFINTION OF TERMS

Hospital- an institution that is built, staffed, and equipped for the diagnosis of disease; for the treatment, both medical and surgical, of the sick and the injured; and for their housing during this process.

Google Map - Google Maps is a web mapping service developed by Google. It offers satellite imagery, aerial photography, street maps, 360° interactive panoramic views of streets, real-time traffic conditions, and route planning for traveling by foot, car, bicycle and air, or public transportation.

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