Proper patient Appointment Scheduling and Medication is necessary to manage and keep track of appointments and medicine collection. Normally, we see patients coming to the hospitals and health centers and filling out registration forms and waits for the response for an agreed date. The previous system did develop scheduling for hospital appointment which was purely dependent on nurse towards scheduling based on appointment received from patient by tapping NFC card on kiosk or from mobile. Also the hospital maintains database servers for appointment scheduling and medicine collection. The system however lacked intelligence in scheduling the appointment with doctors. In addition there were no timing constraints in place towards making or cancelling appointment. The system had no feature towards rescheduling or cancelling appointment too. In addition medicine collection used NFC card as cash card in deducting the money towards buying medicine and notifying the patient on mobile for collection. The system was designed only for Android based handset which was another drawback too. Last but not least there was no mobile feature for patients and doctors towards rescheduling appointment, looking for appointments and also receiving notification for appointment. So taking these aspects into consideration Intelligent Mobile Appointment scheduling and Medicine collection had been developed. The system however possesses the intelligence towards automatic calling of patient based on priority for appointment scheduling. Also system would enforce the timing constraints towards making, rescheduling and cancelling appointment. Last but not least the pharmacy side possess feature towards serving and declining medicine issuing for patients too in addition to sending notification on mobile for collection. The implementation been carried out using Php, MYSQL, HTML5, Dreamweaver CSS4 and 6, JQuery.

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Intelligent Mobile Hospital Appointment Scheduling
and Medicine Collection
Swabik Musa Abdulla Wani Suresh Sankaranarayanan
Computing and Information Systems Computing and Information Systems
Institut Teknologi Brunei Institut Teknologi Brunei
Brunei Darussalam Brunei Darussalam
Alswabir012@gmail.com suresh.sn@itb.edu.bn
Abstract— Proper patient Appointment Scheduling and
Medication is necessary to manage and keep track of
appointments and medicine collection. Normally, we see
patients coming to the hospitals and health centers and filling
out registration forms and waits for the response for an
agreed date. The previous system did develop scheduling for
hospital appointment which was purely dependent on nurse
towards scheduling based on appointment received from
patient by tapping NFC card on kiosk or from mobile. Also
the hospital maintains database servers for appointment
scheduling and medicine collection. The system however
lacked intelligence in scheduling the appointment with
doctors. In addition there were no timing constraints in place
towards making or cancelling appointment. The system had
no feature towards rescheduling or cancelling appointment
too. In addition medicine collection used NFC card as cash
card in deducting the money towards buying medicine and
notifying the patient on mobile for collection. The system was
designed only for Android based handset which was another
drawback too. Last but not least there was no mobile feature
for patients and doctors towards rescheduling appointment,
looking for appointments and also receiving notification for
appointment. So taking these aspects into consideration
Intelligent Mobile Appointment scheduling and Medicine
collection had been developed. The system however possesses
the intelligence towards automatic calling of patient based on
priority for appointment scheduling. Also system would
enforce the timing constraints towards making, rescheduling
and cancelling appointment. Last but not least the pharmacy
side possess feature towards serving and declining medicine
issuing for patients too in addition to sending notification on
mobile for collection. The implementation been carried out
using Php, MYSQL, HTML5, Dreamweaver CSS4 and 6,
JQuery
Index Terms—NFC, Php, MySql, HTML5, CSS4.
I. INTRODUCTION
Appointment scheduling attracts increasing attention as the
demand for healthcare increases. Due to the increasing
number of patients visiting hospitals, there’s a high demand
for the introduction of intelligence and automation in
respect of hospital related processes such as appointment
scheduling and medicine collection. This is with a view to
cub on the long waiting time [1][2], queuing for medicine
and the complexity in hospital administration and this will
increase the efficiency of medication/treatment and also
increase patient satisfaction. Many techniques like online
patient registration and appointment scheduling etc., have
been developed [3][4] in order to improve on the workflow
and to smoothen the waiting time but still these systems
have got some constraints towards scheduling.
There are two ways of getting the Medical consultation:
one is Walk-in appointment and the other is scheduling an
appointment. The call in the walk-in appointment will be
received by an individual at the hospital who will store the
appointment details and the request in either a large book
or in a database. The appointments are then transferred
manually to a general area, readable by all staff, or they are
printed onto individual sheets of paper and distributed to
specific specialists or doctors. The process repeats itself,
sometimes multiple times every day.
In the paper based appointment system and especially
where the number of patients are high, there exists a greater
possibility that some patient appointments will be updated
without their notification. In addition to this, the act of
updating/rescheduling appointments is tiresome and will be
a thorough dissatisfaction towards a patient.
The need for new ways towards providing more efficient
health care services, coupled with the application of major
advancements in Information and Communication
Technology (ICT) have resulted in the increased use of ICT
applications over the past decade [5].
Online registration and scheduling [4] of
appointment has been one of the options for the healthcare
administration to avoid the hassle of queuing and filling out
registration forms. This has become inefficient as the
transfer of patient’s data can infiltrated online and hence
the risk of online hacking. More to that, no prioritization
facility is available for the online registered patients and so
there is delay in entertaining them before they are called for
consultation. Lastly there is no reminder system on any
platforms. So towards obviating this defect with the use of
mobile technology, an intelligent agent based Mobile
patient appointment scheduling [6] was developed. This
system allows patients to make appointment through the
use of intelligent agents via the mobile. It may be
mentioned that in this system the appointment scheduling

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has been carried out using intelligent agent on behalf of
human being who also includes prioritization in respect of
Senior citizen, physically challenged and so on. But still
there exists some challenges like the absence of the
reminder system for patients or doctors of upcoming
appointment, etc. Secondly prioritized scheduling was
facilitated for mobile appointments only and not for walk-
in cases, which again brings in a lot of waiting time and
delay for patients.
With this as basis, a Near Field communication (NFC)
based appointment system [7][8] was developed where
appointment received from patient by tapping the NFC
card on kiosk for walk-in or from mobile. The system
however lacks intelligence towards intelligent scheduling
of patients which again was purely dependent on the nurse.
Also system does not possess any automatic calling of
patient and no confirmation of appointment done by
patients from mobile when they come in.
So based on the above drawbacks of the NFC based
appointment system, we developed intelligent appointment
scheduling [9] in the above NFC based system. With this,
now the system here would incorporate prioritized
scheduling based on appointment made by NFC thru walk-
in. In addition timing constraint been enforced towards
making appointment and also system automatically
prioritizes the appointments received. Lastly this system
would call patient automatically based on prioritized listing
of patient appointment for being served by the nurse. The
intelligent appointment scheduling developed [9] been
further enhanced in this research paper by adding mobile
feature with intelligence towards Scheduling, rescheduling
of appointment from patient and doctor side including
cancelling for patient only. These feature been automated
by software with no human intervention. In addition the
notification feature for patient and doctor on their mobile
handset been incorporated too. Lastly system does have
feature of serving or cancelling of medicine to pharmacy in
addition to sending notification for medicine collection.
These been developed using CSS4, HTML5, and
Dreamweaver to work on any mobile handset. The rest of
paper is organized as follows. Section 2 provides the
survey of literature on the subject area, and section 3
describes the Intelligent Mobile Hospital Appointment
Scheduling and Medicine collection developed in this
research. Section 4, provides the results of the research
study carried out and section 5 provides the concluding
remarks.
II. LITERATURE SURVEY
A. Paper Based Appointment System
Paper-based system mostly requires patients to fill up the
forms and submit to the registration desk or they could
simply place their identification card or appointment card
in the box provided and wait for their name to be called.
The question is what happens if the card is misplaced or
taken away by any unauthorized personnel? One issue that
has been presented is that if patient’s records are not to be
found or declared as an unregistered patient, the current
admission staff will delay his/her consultation time. Based
on the survey report published in 2007 [10][11], most of
the complained issues are on the time spent in the waiting
room and in that 19% of the patients complained that they
could not get an appointment within a week ’ s time.
Outpatient dissatisfaction with healthcare procedures was
not only associated with waiting times but over one-third
chose to not fulfill the appointment schedule as they
expected to have to wait for long periods. This issue still
remains a challenge in the healthcare industry worldwide
. B. Online Appointment System
Online registration and scheduling appointment has been
one of the options next thought for the patients to avoid the
hassle of queuing and filling out registration forms. It also
inherently gives an advantage for the administrator towards
monitoring and easy searching of any medical records or
personal information as they are available online. However,
it becomes inefficient as the transfer of data can be filtered
as accessible online, and hence, the risk of online hacking
has been very huge. In addition, even in the online
registration and appointment scheduling, there has been no
advancement in the technique towards providing any
prioritization facility and so there is still a delay in
entertaining patients before they are being called for
outpatient consultation. Lastly there is no reminder system
on any platforms for appointments which has been
confirmed by the healthcare administrators [4].
BruHIMS (Brunei Health Information System) [12] has
also made an attempt in acquiring the needs of healthcare
management system by introducing an interactive
scheduling for appointments and automatic transfer of
prescription form from doctors to pharmacists. Moreover,
the system also provides prioritization categories which are
entered manually to the system. However, even though
patient registrations are to be inserted onto a dedicated
server, patient is still required to fill in a complex
registration forms at the hospital. Appointment
managements are still be made manually, whereby patients
have to call to schedule an appointment. In addition, with
the realization in using ICT in healthcare, outpatient staffs
are able to access patient medical records, and making a
quicker decision to lower the outpatient waiting times rate
as it may reduce steps in procedures with consistent
management.
C. Mobile Appointment System
Recently there has been a tremendous development in
smart phones particularly in the hardware and software
utilsed, which enabled the Mobile users through B3G
(Beyond 3G) to roam freely through heterogeneous
networks on all-IP platforms leading to implementation of
Mobile health care [13].

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Based on the above mentioned developments in mobile
technology research was carried towards developing an
intelligent agent based Hospital appointment scheduling [6]
using Android Enabled Mobile handset. The System so
developed eliminates the need of staffs in performing the
similar tasks and admission activities which would
eventually improve the speed of processing of any
unscheduled appointment. The system takes into account
the type of patient in prioritizing towards making
appointment which is based on fuzzy rules and constraints.
The system also possesses facility for seeing the list of
appointments from doctor ’ s handset and patient’s
handset. In addition, systems also possess facility for
sending appointment confirmation.
However, system application was inconclusive whereby
there was no reminder sending possibility for patients or
doctors towards the upcoming appointment. Also
prioritized scheduling was suited for mobile patient
appointment only and not for walk-in patients which again
puts a lot of waiting time and delay for patients. So
accordingly the Near Field Communication (NFC) based
mobile appointment system was developed [7][8] where
scheduling for hospital appointment and medicine
collections were purely dependent on the nurse towards
scheduling it from the system, based on appointment
received from patient, by tapping the NFC card on kiosk or
from mobile. This developed system however lacked
intelligence usage towards prioritizing the appointment
automatically and also no timing constraint towards
making appointment. In addition no automatic call by the
system based on list of scheduled appointment. So with this
as basis NFC based intelligent appointment scheduling
system [9] was developed which overcome above
weakness. The system developed has been further
enhanced by adding more intelligence and automation
towards rescheduling, cancelling of appointment from
doctor and patient side without need for human nurse at the
hospital side. Lastly intelligence in sending notification to
mobile user on their handset towards appointment,
medicine collection and so forth. The details explained in
forthcoming section.
III. MOBILE INTELLIGENT HOSPITAL APPOINTMENT
SCHEDULING SYSTEM
Having discussed in detail about some of earlier
appointment scheduling systems and their weaknesses,
NFC based intelligent appointment scheduling system been
developed [Suresh and Musa 2014]. The proposed system
is an improvement over NFC based mobile appointment
system [7][8] where patient taps the NFC appointment card
on kiosk and then the appointment is made. The nurse on
receiving the appointment prioritizes the patient based on
age and disease type for doctor’s consultation. The main
weakness of the system, as mentioned, is that prioritization
is not automated and is dependent on nurse only who
prioritizes based on age and disease type. In addition no
timing constraint is involved towards making appointment.
All these motivated towards improving the NFC based
appointment system by adding intelligence towards
appointment scheduling.
In the current NFC based intelligent appointment
scheduling system developed [9], the patient on tapping
NFC card at the appointment kiosk is provided with timing
slot to make appointment which takes into consideration
time at which card was tapped. A time window between 15
to 30 minutes is given for making appointment using kiosk
and for patients confirming appointment made via mobile.
We have made an assumption of minimum of 15 to
maximum of 30 minutes time window for making an
appointment. This assumption is based on fact that the
system would then prioritize the patient list for nurse to
view towards calling. Second improvement is the patient
got the option to select the available doctors in the
appointment slot while making appointment too. Thirdly
once all appointments received, the system automatically
prioritizes the appointments based on age and profile of
each patient and not looking into disease type. In addition
the system also allots the patient to the respective doctors
for consultation too. Fourthly after the system prioritizes,
list of patients and order in which they would be served is
also displayed on LCD display system of the hospital. Now
the prioritized patient list is accessible by the nurse towards
automatic calling of patient towards payment before
sending to the respective doctor allotted by the system for
consultation. The doctor on the other hand gets the list of
patients with their appointment id for consultation based on
same prioritization.
The current NFC based intelligent appointment scheduling
developed [9] is been further enhanced by adding the
mobile feature towards making appointment with
intelligence where there might be patients who would want
to make appointment from mobile but still confirmation of
appointment need to be done by tapping NFC card at
appointment kiosk 15-30 minutes before appointment slot.
Secondly the system got intelligence towards rescheduling
appointment from mobile for doctor side where system
would automatically reschedule to next day as specified but
still looking into schedule of other doctor „s too. Similarly
rescheduling and cancellation of appointment for patient
from mobile is added too where intelligence exist in system
towards rescheduling to same doctor or to any doctor again
looking into doctor‟s schedule and so. Also patient is
given provision to cancel appointment from mobile too.
The need for nurse to reschedule or cancel appointment is
completely removed unless in circumstances where patient
after coming to hospital decides to reschedule or cancel it.
In terms of medicine collection, system send automatic
notification to patient‟s mobile for medicine collection
towards due date. Similar notifications sent for upcoming

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appointments and so for doctor and patient‟s too. Lastly
towards collecting medicine at pharmacist, in situations
where patient does not turn up after calling for more than 3
times, a message sent to patient‟s mobile to collect
medicine at any nearby pharmacy rather than coming again
to the hospital for collecting too. This information sent to
all pharmacists for enabling the patient to collect it without
wasting much time. The architecture of Mobile Intelligent
hospital appointment scheduling is shown in Fig.1. Fig.2
shows the Context diagram of the system. In the system all
devices are connected to one local database, which
contains:
 Patient lists from NFC reader device, including date and
time the NFC Card come in contact.
 Patient basic information.
 List of confirmed appointments for nurses, doctors and
pharmacists.
 List of new appointments, which have been entered by
patients from mobile website application and from the
Kiosk.
 Patient and health personnel‟s‟ username and passwords.
Fig.1 Architecture of Mobile Intelligent Hospital Appointment
Scheduling
NFC enabled Intelligent
Hospital appointment
Scheduling and Medicine
collection
PATIENT NURSE
DOCTOR
Appointment Scheduling
Accepted appointment
View Appointment Information
View Patients list for Diagnosis
Context Diagram for NFC enabled Intelligent Hospital appointment Scheduling and Medicine
collection
View confirmed Appointments
Appointment Approval Notifications
PHARMACY
Incoming medical prescription
Fig.2 Context Diagram
The Algorithm of system developed been described below
towards scheduling, rescheduling & cancelling of
appointment and medicine collection
Appointment Scheduling
Step 1: Patient registers with hospital from mobile or as
walk-in
Step 2 : If registration successful, patient issued NFC
appointment card.
Step 3: Patient Taps NFC appointment card for making
appointment either as walk-in/ mobile or from confirming
appointment for those made via mobile.
Step 4: Once details verified and authorized by tapping
NFC card, patient be shown time slot available for
appointment
Step 4b: Patient allowed making appointment or
confirming appointment up to maximum time window of
15 to 30 minutes
Step4: If time window of 15 to 30 minutes is exceeded,
patient cannot make/ confirm appointment for current time
slot and has to make appointment in next available slot
Step 5: Once time slot selected, patient has choice to select
the preferred doctor too
Step 6: Once all details selected, appointment sent to
hospital server for recording
Step 7: Once time window has expired, the hospital
server would use the software intelligence in prioritizing
the patients who made appointment based on their profile
in the following order:

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 Disabled
 Elderly
 Pregnant
 Infant
 Normal
Step 8: Once prioritized, the patient serving order be
displayed based on priority and nurse would call patient
according to the order for being served and sent to doctor
for consultation
Step 9: Doctor after serving the patient according to
prioritized listing are then sent to pharmacy for medicine
collection
Rescheduling Appointment- Patient side
Step 1: Patient logs with NFC based appointment id and
password from mobile
Step2: On logging successfully, patient sends reschedule
request like date, time, physician name if necessary.
Steps 3: System on receiving reschedule request possesses
the intelligence in rescheduling appointment of patient
looking into doctor‟s schedule and availability.
Step 4: Once successfully rescheduled, patient sent
confirmation on reschedule to mobile handset.
Cancelling Appointment- Patient side
Step 1: Patient logs with NFC based appointment id and
password from mobile
Step2: On logging successfully, patient sends cancellation
request
Steps 3: System on receiving cancellation request cancels
appointment.
Step 4: Once successfully cancelled, patient sent
confirmation on cancellation to mobile handset.
Rescheduling Appointment- Doctor side
Step 1: Doctor logs with id and password from mobile or
computer
Step2: On logging successfully, doctor can view the
appointment towards reschedule
Steps 3: On sending rescheduling request, System
possesses the intelligence in rescheduling doctor
appointment to next available date and time
Step 4: Once successfully rescheduled, doctor and patient
sent confirmation on reschedule to mobile handset
Medicine Collection- Pharmacist side
Step 1: Patient after seeing doctor towards consultation
sends the prescription with details electronically to
pharmacist.
Step 2: Pharmacist on receiving the prescription be called
for collecting medicine by displaying the NFC id of patient
on LCD panel in order in which prescription was received.
Step 3: If patient for collecting medicine does not turn up
after calling 3 times by pressing buzzer, the notification
sent by system to patient mobile handset to collect in any
pharmacy thru express counter than visiting the hospital
again.
Step 4: System also send automatic notification to patient
mobile handset for regular collection of medicine say every
3 months or so.
IV. IMPLEMENTATION OF MOBILE INTELLIGENT HOSPITAL
APPOINTMENT SCHEDULING SYSTEM
The implementation of Mobile Intelligent Hospital
appointment scheduling system been carried out using
MYSQL with WAMP server and PHP. The database
system is developed using MySQL which is an open source
application owned and managed by Sun Microsystems and
acquired by the Oracle Cooperation. The web side scripting
been carried out using PHP, a popular general purpose
scripting language.CS6 used for mobile side development
to be compatible with all mobile handsets.
In our implementation NFC device was simulated and not
real hardware was used. The primary reason is that there
already exists a NFC based Mobile appointment system
[7][8] where the NFC reader was interfaced with hospital
appointment database to make appointment. The system
however lacked facility for patient to see list of
appointment slots to choose and no automatic
prioritization. So with that as basis we here have simulated
NFC side as our research more towards intelligent
appointment scheduling based on previous system rather
than building NFC based Mobile appointment system
again.
Let us consider hospital appointment scheduling scenario
for walk-in patient appointment. Now before making
appointment, walk-in patient got to be registered which
nurse does as shown in Fig.3

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Fig.3 Patient Registration- Walk-in Patient
Once patient registered successfully, patient is issued with
NFC based appointment id.
Now towards making appointment for walk-in patient,
patient taps the NFC enabled appointment id in the NFC
based kiosk as shown in Fig.4. Once appointment card is
tapped, appointment kiosk will show the respective time
slots which takes into account the time at which card was
tapped. In here we impose a constraint towards making
appointment which is 30 minutes and failing which next
available appointment slot is shown as shown in Fig.4.
Once time slot is selected, the available doctors shown for
selection which is optional anyway as shown in Fig.5.
Fig.6 shows appointment confirmed with appointment
details sent to Hospital server. In this system if patient past
15 to 30 minute constraint, patient cannot make
appointment. In Fig.7, we see that patient past 15 to 30
minute constraint for 8:30-12:00 p.m time slot and so
accordingly patient can make appointment for next time
slot available only which is 2:00-4:00 p.m.
Fig.4 NFC Tapping and Appointment Time slots
Fig.5 Doctor Selection

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Fig. 6 Appointment Confirmation
Fig.7 Appointment Slot Closed
In here we take as case five patients who are making appointment
for 8:30 a.m -12:00 noon time slot as shown in Fig.3. We here
have patients with varied profiles like Disabled, Senior citizen,
Pregnant, Infants and Normal patient who making appointment
using NFC appointment card at kiosk. The software based
appointment system accepts all appointment up until 30 minutes
before the start of appointment time slot and failing which next
appointment slot shown. Once all appointments received, software
based appointment system possess the intelligence towards
prioritizing all appointment received by pulling the profile of
registered patients from database and accordingly prioritized in the
order as Disabled, Senior Citizen, Pregnant, Infants, Normal
patient which is shown in Fig. 8. The prioritized patient listing is
available on nurse computer to call the patient now.
Fig.8 Prioritized Patient Listing
Once patients prioritized, patients sitting will be notified
the sequence in which patients going to be called on the
LCD Display system. We assume here that there would be
most probably 3 to 4 nurses operating towards calling
patient to take payment before sending to doctor. So
accordingly nurse would select the patient 1 from
prioritized listing and accordingly system would show the
appointment id of patient being served on the counter as
shown in Fig.9. Once the first patient selected, the other
nurse counter would see the remaining patients only for
serving and not the one being served. In here you see
Patient appointment id 220 i.e Edward is being called by
counter 04 nurse for serving and next nurse counter nurses
would see remaining patients as shown in Fig.10.
Fig. 9 Appointment Id with Counter- LCD display

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Fig.10 Patient Listing for Serving- Nurse Side
Now before patients served by nurse, prioritized patient
listing sent to doctors on duty towards medical
consultation. The software here possess intelligence
towards forming combination of prioritized & normal
patient listing to each doctor on duty once appointment
made from NFC kiosk so the order in which patients served
are according to same priority only as in nurse side and
accordingly waiting time reduced. In addition against each
doctor office the order in which prioritized patients with
appointment id going to be called is displayed. This
information sent to doctor system too. But the doctor gets
clearance for calling the patient once served by nurse and
payment made. This doctor sees in his system against the
patient as “Serve” being activated as shown in Fig.11. On
clicking Serve, patients see the appointment id flashed on
LCD display system against doctor office for meeting.
Fig.11 Patient for Serving- Doctor Side
On serving the patients, doctor would get an interface for
recording the medical history and prescription for
pharmacy for issuing medicine to patient too as shown in
Fig.12. These details recorded against Patient profile in
database.
At Pharmacist side, patient details sent along with
appointment id for serving as First come First serve basis
once doctor consulation over and details recorded in
database. So accordingly patient appointment id diplayed
on LCD for collecting medicine by pressing serve button
by pharmacist as shown in Fig. 13.
Fig.12 Doctor interface- Medical Consultation
Fig.13 Patient Serving- Pharmacist side
In addition to making appointment, medical consultation
and medicine collection for walk-in patient, the software
here possess the interface for nurse towards rescheduling
appointment for patient on request by doctor or by patient
itself as shown in Fig.14. Lastly the system also got
interface towards scheduling duty roster for nurses, doctors
and pharmacist as shown in Fig.15 by the administrator or
by nurse as appropriate. In addition , nurse and doctor can
view patient medical history too from the system.

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Fig.14 Reschedule Patient Appointment- Nurse Interface
Fig.15 Scheduling Duty Roster
We have seen so far for walk-in patient appointment and
would see in forthcoming section on how patient can make
appointment from mobile and so forth.
Let us consider a situation where patient wants to make
appointment from mobile rather than walk-in to hospital. In
such situation, registered patient logs into mobile using
NFC id as user name and password as shown in Fig.16.
Once registered successfully, patient can make
appointment as shown in Fig.17 by specifying date, time
and name of physician too. Once all details given, the
mobile handset interacts with software of hospital towards
making appointment by giving appointment id as shown in
Fig.18. But still patient needs to confirm the appointment
using NFC ID in NFC Kiosk of hospital on the
appointment day as shown in Fig.4 with timing constraint
of 15 to 30 minutes before appointment time slot.
Fig.16 Mobile Patient- Logging
Fig.17 Mobile Patient Appointment
Fig.18 Appointment ID Confirmation
In addition to making appointment, patient also from
mobile towards receiving notification on mobile handset
like upcoming appointment, collection of medicine from
pharmacy as shown in Fig.19.

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Fig.19 Notifications on Mobile- Patient side
In addition Patient also can reschedule appointment from
mobile too. Fig.20 shows the list of appointment on mobile
for patient. On selecting the appropriate appointment id,
patient is given the option to reschedule the appointment to
next convenient date as shown in Fig.20. These details sent
to software of hospital scheduling system which got
intelligence to look if there are free slots available for
rescheduling appointment to next available date and time.
If slots available, appointment rescheduled and information
sent to mobile handset with appointment id as shown in
Fig.21.
Fig.20 Patient Appointment- Reschedule from Mobile
Fig.21 Appointment Rescheduled
Lastly patient on his mobile handset receive notification
from pharmacy to collect medicine in addition to upcoming
notification. This notification from pharmacy is for two
scenarios- One scenario for regular medicine collection.
The second scenario is where patient after medical
consultation, their prescription details sent to pharmacy for
collection. On calling the patient three times for collecting
medicine if patient does not turn up, system automatically
send notification to patient mobile to collect in any
pharmacy as shown in Fig.23 and this information sent to
other pharmacy of hospital too.
Fig.23 Collection of Medicine Notification- Patient Mobile
We see now as how doctor from mobile handset can
reschedule appointments and also incoming appointments
through software without having nurse to do it for doctor.
In terms of incoming appointments and reschedule of
appointment, doctors logs into system with their username
and password. Once logged successfully, doctor view the
incoming appointments as shown in Fig. 24.

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57 | P a g e
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Fig.24 Incoming appointment- Doctor Mobile
In terms of reschedule appointment, doctor view their
appointment and accordingly got option to reschedule as
shown in Fig.25. On reschedule, the details sent to software
scheduling system of hospital which looks into available
free dates and time by referring to duty roster of other
doctors for rescheduling appointment as shown in Fig. 26.
Once rescheduled, the notification sent to patient‟s mobile
too.
Fig.25 Rescheduling Appointment- Doctor Mobile
Fig.26 Rescheduled Appointment Confirmation
V. CONCLUSION & FUTURE WORK
So to conclude, the research work in hospital scheduling
system presented face some of the challenges that currently
patient and staff alike were poorly executed and inefficient
scheduling systems are concerned. For refining the core
operations in outpatient clinics in respect of health
applications, paper-based methods were used which
resulted in low quality and efficiency as well as longer
waiting times for both scheduled and walk-in patients.
With the advent of ICT, lot of online appointment
scheduling system has been developed but still faces some
challenges. There has also been work reported on using
Intelligent Agent towards patient appointment using
Android mobile handset which uses fuzzy preferences for
appointment scheduling. Also there has been work on
BruHIMS by Government of Brunei on Electronic medical
record which has been further improvised by developing
NFC based patient appointment system. These two were
motivation toward our Intelligent Mobile Hospital
Appointment Scheduling and Medicine Collection system
which is believed to improve the performance focusing on
the critical component. It is proven that those technologies
can be used to replace manual and traditional systems in
appointment scheduling and outpatient records. This
system will centralize scheduling system and sorting the
prioritization. The architecture of developed system been
presented followed by Algorithm and technologies used in
this solution presented as screenshots.
In Future, the system could be further enhanced by
intelligently scheduling for normal patient thereby still
more reducing waiting time. Secondly system could also
check the availability of medicine before calling patient
for collection and so forth. Also the system can also have
feature towards electronically authorising towards
collection medicine in any other hospital if medicine not
available in current clinic or hospital. The system can be
made cloud enabled which enables storing the
appointment, medicine and health record details in
distributed cloud server than centralised cloud server. Last
but not least system can also be extended to look into
Quality of service and security issues in cloud while storing
patient appointment and medicine details.
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