Skip to main navigation menu Skip to main content Skip to site footer

Articles

CJICT: VOL. 12, NO. 1, June 2024

Queue Management Application for Healthcare Providers

Submitted
July 9, 2024
Published
2024-06-05

Abstract

Increase in healthcare services demands, coupled with the traditional methods of attending to medical services that demand physical attention of the medical practitioners and everyone seeking medical attention, to physically appear in a particular location at a point in time. As a result of the high demand for medical attention congestion, long patient queues, inpatient attention due to long queues, and discomfort experienced by those physically waiting in line for medical attention. This coupled with the danger and risk faced by medical practitioners and patients, especially during the Covid-19 outbreak, calls for other efficient means of booking an appointment with a medical practitioner without facing the usual abnormal rigours. These calls for the introduction of a Virtual Queue Management Application (VQMA, a mobile APP developed using scheduling and priority algorithms to regulate the flow of people seeking medical services. This allows patients to schedule appointments online through a mobile APP, and arrive at the health centre at their appointed time. Patient appointments are categorised as critical and non-critical. The Critical category handles emergencies or life-threatening cases requiring urgent attention, while the non-critical category is divided into Regular and Delayed. It enables individuals seeking essential services to wait in line virtually. VQMA was tested and observations were made on the patient arrival rate within a 60-minute interval. The report derived from the experiments, reveals a consistent decrease or gradual reduction in average waiting time for non-critical appointments. This improvement demonstrated a 67% better performance over the existing model.