Designing and Implementation of a New Booking System (Software) For a Dental Practice

by

Abstract

Several healthcare processes are comprised of clinical actions that span over various independently managed healthcare organizations. Reserving resources for such healthcare processes implies the interoperation of independently managed healthcare organizations , which information systems are often based on proprietary solutions , and developed in piecemeal way. Reserving clinical resources in such an environment is problematic due to the autonomy and heterogeneity of the healthcare organizations information systems. Moreover , many healthcare processes have timing constraints , which complicate the reservation process. In particular , neither optimal resource allocation methods nor traditional transaction models can be deployed in a loosely coupled environment consisting of autonomous systems. In this paper , we present a new transaction model , called 2-phase reservation transaction , which can be used to ensure that clinical resources are reserved in an atomic way , and which minimize the efforts required for undoing the effects of the canceled clinical reservations. We also present how 2-phase reservation transactions can be implemented in Service Oriented Architecture by exploiting WS-Coordination. In addition , we present how Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) can be used in specifying the transactional requirements of the clinical resource reservation processes.

Table Of Contents

INTRODUCTION1

System Operation Principles6

Advantages For Patients7

Advantages For Specialists8

Advantages For Reception Personnel9

BACKGROUND AND LITERATURE REVIEW10

Modern Clinical Management14

Digital Clinical Records- Primary Dental Care16

Human Cognitive Performance17

Supporting Clinical Cognitive Performance19

Digital Practice Management And Administration21

Barriers To dental Patient Scheduling22

Scheduling Implications22

Case study- Automated Booking System for Dental Care23

Requirements Analysis26

System Design27

Schedule module30

Performance Module31

Strategy Modle32

System Process35

Phase 1: Registering Request35

Phase 2: Checking Strategies36

Phase 3: Arrange Appointment38

Summary38

ANALYSIS AND DESIGN39

Reservation Proces And Two Phase Reservation Transaction41

Modeling Transactional Healt Care Procesess by BPMN42

2-Phase Composed Reservation Transaction44

IMPLEMENTATION AND TESTING: 2-PHASE RESERVATION TRANSACTIONS47

EVALUATION OF BOOKING SYSTEM49

Negative Points54

Positive points55

Alternative solutions55

CONCLUSION56

REFERENCES62

Designing and Implementation of a New Booking System (Software) For a Dental Practice

Introduction

Frequently healthcare processes are comprised of many clinical actions. For example , in a healthcare processes a blood test may precede other physical examinations. Also the actions of a process may span over many independently managed healthcare organizations. As a result , reserving resources for a healthcare process requires the interoperation of many healthcare organizations. Clinical actions often have mutual timing constraints. For example , a timing constraint may state that X-ray must be taken one day before radiologist's office hour , and blood test must be taken at least one week before radiographer's office hour. Further , there may be a variety of patient specific timing constraints , e.g. , in order to minimize the number of patient's visits on clinical units , blood test and electrocardiogram should be scheduled for the same afternoon.

In most cases healthcare processes or their subsets should be atomic. Hence , also the clinical resource reservation processes should also provide atomicity features. For example , patient's reservation on X-ray machine may be useless if the reservation on patient's ambulance transportation to the laboratory fails , or reservation on radiologist may be useless if the reservation on X-ray machine ...