(IJACSA) International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications,
Vol. XXX, No. XXX, 2014
Prototype of mobile application for medical
appointment system to optimize hospital queues
Laberiano Andrade-Arenas Hugo Obispo Mego
Facultad de Ciencias e Ingenierı́a Facultad de Ciencias e Ingenierı́a
Universidad de Ciencias y Humanidades Universidad de Ciencias y Humanidades Universidad de Ciencias y Humanidades
landrade@uch.edu.pe hugobispom@uch.pe
Abstract—
It is a simple process, in which we only have to enter our
data and then we must choose the available doctor and with the
appropriate specialty, and then choose the date and time and
click on separate appointment, and a report of the scheduled
appointment will appear, we will also have the opportunity to
see all the appointments separated by the user.In a medical
centre it is a problem for patients to register an appointment,
as the doctor attends in most cases on a first come, first served
basis, which is not in the best interest of the patients. Nowadays,
mobile devices are increasingly used, which is why they need to
be used in their real dimension. This research work resulted in
a mobile application that can be used to schedule appointments
and optimise hospital queues, which we will develop through a
programming which is Android Studio, with programming in
Kotlin, and to save the data of medical appointments, we will
use the firebase database, there it will save the information of
the patients and As with the doctors available, this system will
make it easier for us to queue and separate our appointments in
a virtual way.
It is a simple process, in which we only have to enter our
data and then we must choose the available doctor and with the
appropriate specialty, and then choose the date and time and
click on separate appointment, and a report of the scheduled
appointment will appear, we will also have the opportunity to
see all the appointments separated by the user.
Index Terms—Mobile Application; Medical Appointments; Di-
mension
I. I NTRODUCTION
Web and mobile technologies are becoming very important
in the field of software development and in the world, since in
the current market we can find a variety of devices composed
of operating systems and hardware that offer the user great
benefits and a revolutionary experience. In addition, we can
say that the waiting time to get a medical appointment is a
problem that Peruvians regret every time they want to attend
a health centre, especially when it is public [1].
The world of technology is undergoing a major change
in recent years, not only in terms of the number of people
implementing it, but also in the technology it uses [2].
The number of users of app technologies is growing rapidly
worldwide, this gives us an idea of the revolution of the
mobile environment, as it is increasingly changing, providing
an environment in connection and movement [3].
Hospitals in Peru tend to delay medical appointments
slowly. Currently, data is recorded manually on a computer,
www.ijacsa.thesai.org
Fili Sanchez Condori
Facultad de Ciencias e Ingenierı́a
filsanchezc@uch.pe
resulting in levels of errors and data loss. Therefore, it is
necessary to create an app that speeds up the process, saves
time and improves the quality of user care [4].
According to the newspaper ”Gestión”, the waiting time to
make an appointment has increased to 4 days and 22 hours on
average. We can say that the attention of the health centres
that are administered by the State is very badly perceived
by the citizens. According to the 2015 satisfaction survey of
the National Health Superintendence (Susalud), four out of
ten patients are not satisfied with the services offered by the
Integrated Health System (SIS) [5].
Due to a demand for the service and for economic reasons
it has been decided to make use of a system with free
software, which is based on a solution for the separation
of appointments, through an information system, such as
requesting medical appointments. However, there will be better
communication between medical staff and patients. In addi-
tion, the application will keep a record of medical information
about the appointments made [6].
Scheduling medical appointments is one of the key pro-
cesses in the health care industry. A well-designed appoint-
ment system can improve patient satisfaction and reduce the
cost of hospitals and clinics [7].
The aim of this research work is to optimize and solve the
needs of patients through a prototype of a mobile appointment
system application, where they will benefit from any techno-
logical advance applied to health and to the automation of
services in medical processes that are carried out on a daily
basis.
This paper is structured as follows, with section II describ-
ing in more detail the methodology used for the design of
the mobile application. Section III will highlight the results
obtained and finally, Section IV will discuss the results and
present the conclusions.
II. METHODOLOGY
In this part we will specify the processes to be inferred for
the advancement of the mobile application, for which we will
use the Agile Scrum Methodology, since it will present us with
a personalized model of the task in our sketch, besides the fact
that there will be the virtue of malleability in the requirements,
we will also specify the materials that will be used, as well
as the sketch that will be made.
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A. SCRUM METHODOLOGY
Agile Scrum Methodology: As written by Troy Dimes, this
methodology is the best solution for those companies that
have to face the obstacles of not having a methodology to
plan a software. This methodology is a function chart to
design software in a confused way and present it in time in
a simpler way. It is a framework within the methodology of
agile software development, which will provide you with the
design of an exquisite software applying a group of patterns
to be followed by the teams and using determined series [8].
1) Phase 1: Product Backlog:
In the Backlog Product the approximate time is 2 minutes,
the User Stories elaborated together with the client will be Fig. 1. Processes of the Scrum methodology
stored, in this stage the functional requirements that will be
implemented, the elaboration of the system will be shown [9].
3) SCRUM Team:
2) Phase 2: Sprint Backlog:
The team working on the methodology has certain charac-
The Sprint Backlog details a set of tasks or list to be performed
teristics such as being multifunctional and multidisciplinary,
by team members, the development of which will allow a bet-
in addition each team member chooses the Sprint that wants
ter implementation of the system. In this particular case, it was
to work and within the team there are analysts, architects,
divided into three main Sprints: Form Filling, Appointment
designers, programmers and testers. The team in the SCRUM
Recording and Appointment Reporting. The development of
methodology has to be formed by 5 or 10 people, each The
this app will be developed in Andoid Studio with kotlin and
member must work full time, and members can exchange
the MariaDB database management system.
Roles during the Sprint [13].
3) Phase 3: Daily Scrum:
Daily Scrum is all those daily meetings at the same time with C. MEETINGS IN THE SCRUM METHODOLOGY
the team that will be held with the client in order to make a
quick inspection of the progress of the current Sprint, i.e. to 1) Sprint Planning Meeting:
discuss the difficulties encountered and to adapt the tasks to It is usually held at the beginning of each meeting and usually
be carried out [9]. lasts about 8 hours. In this part of the meeting the objectives
of each project or Sprint are given, as well as the activities
4) Phase 4: Sprint Review:
and roles of the project [14].
This occurs at the end of each Sprint, to inspect the increment
2) Daily SCRUM Meeting:
and adapt if necessary, where discussions are held with the
This meeting is usually held daily and usually lasts 15 minutes,
development team and the customer on the integration of new
almost always the members are on their feet to save time
requirements based on the outcome of the inspected increment.
and because of the short duration of this meeting, it is not a
5) Phase 5: Retrospective of the Sprint:
meeting to solve problems, but to ask three questions, which
The Sprint Review is the last scrum event and comes after
are: What did you do yesterday, what will you do tomorrow
the Sprint Review, this stage ends the Sprint performed. It
and what are the obstacles to your task? [15].
identifies the improvements for the next Sprint by solving any
3) Sprint Review y Sprint Retrospective:
problems found in the code or application [10].
These are meetings that usually last between 2 and 4 hours,
We will now look at the processes of the Scrum methodol-
in which Sprint Review involves all the members of the
ogy and the steps to be followed to carry them out, as shown
team, whether managers, clients, and all those involved in the
in Fig. 1.
project, where the team has to present what has been achieved
in the Sprint and many times they do it by showing a DEMO.
B. ROLES IN THE SCRUM METHODOLOGY The Sprint Retrospective meeting is only held with members
1) Product Owner: of the Sprint team, it is a feedback meeting and each member
It is responsible for defining the characteristics of the product of the team indicates what is being done well or badly, it
and prioritizes the listing in the ProductBacklog in each also indicates everything that can be improved and how these
iteration. The ProductOwner represents the client, and is improvements will be used [16].
responsible for clarifying the client’s requirements [11].
III. CASE STUDY
2) SCRUM Master:
He is responsible for leading the project and for the successful With the methodology and steps mentioned above, the
completion of each Sprint, he also makes sure that the team processes detailed according to the prototypes of the mobile
works properly in a harmonious, functional and productive application will be explained below, for which a payroll
way [12]. control and monitoring system will be designed.
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 (IJACSA) International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications,
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A. SCRUM PROCESSES • Sprint 2 (Separation of appointments)

1) Product Backlog: In the process of separating appointments, you must
The important user stories made for the users were the process the filling out of the form with the following
following: data, know the place and date of the hospital, with which
doctor will carry out the appointment, also add a detail
• I as a user is required to fill out the form to have a patient
of the appointment once separated, as shown in Fig.4.
information and also according to the availability of the
doctor.
• As a user it is mandatory to separate a medical appoint-
ment in order to save time and have a good administration
of the appointments.
• As a user I want to have an appointment report to keep
track of my appointments.
2) Sprint Backlog:
• Sprint 1 (Form filling)
The user can fill in the form to know his or her nec-
essary user data and to know which doctor is available,
according to the specialty he or she is looking for, and
thus establish the appropriate day and time, as shown in
Fig.2 and Fig.3.

Fig. 4. Separation of appointments

• Sprint 3 (Appointment report)

In this sprint a report will be made of all the appointments
separated by the user, whether they are appointments
attended or scheduled, with a detail of each one of them
and it will be possible to count the appointments attended
and scheduled and at the same time it will help to save
well and be better organized, as shown in Fig.5.

Fig. 2. Filling out the form

Fig. 5. Appointment report

Fig. 3. Assigning the day and time 3) Daily Scrum:

The individuals involved in the daily meetings will take turns
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 (IJACSA) International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications,
according to the previous day’s schedule. These meetings will
be attended by the Area Directors, the General Manager, the
operators, the administrator and the system developer(s). The
following image shows the communications between the users
of the equipment, which must be constantly related during the
sketch, as shown in Fig.6.
Fig. 6. Payroll Control and Monitoring Scrum Team
4) Sprint Review:
After finishing the Sprints, they are inspected by the scrum
team, in this case the review will have three hours at most. The
general manager will assess and determine which tasks have
been completed and still need to be adapted to the changes.
In addition, the developers will explain the process and the
solutions to the problems they had during the development of
Sprint (Form filling, Appointment registration and Appoint-
ment reporting). Then the increment is discussed and questions
are answered.
5) Retrospective of the Sprint:
The Scrum team evaluates the processes and techniques used
in the development of Sprint, such as Android Studio with the
kotlin programming language, MariaDB database management
and the Scrum graphic tool. Those involved may suggest
new changes or procedures and methods to improve the
development of the App increment.
IV. RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS
A. ABOUT THE CASE STUDY
In the case of a study on the Mobile Application Prototype
of a medical appointment system to optimise hospital queues,
several prototypes were made and major fields were included
for their respective functionality, and these were reviewed and
approved by the Scrum team. Compared to the article ”A
smartphone application to improve Bangladesh’s health care
system”, its methodology used is through a logic diagram and
the cabin reservation diagram [17]. In this article, the design of
the software using is through Android Studio along with the
Scrum steps, also using different kotlin tools and MariaDB
database manager. All this was done to achieve a design
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Vol. XXX, No. XXX, 2014
suitable for the control and booking of medical appointments
in hospitals.
1) Software development methodology:
Methodologies oriented towards customer interaction and in-
cremental software development show partially functional ver-
sions of the software to the customer in short intervals of time,
so that he can evaluate and suggest changes to the product as it
develops [18]. These are called Agile methodologies, as shown
in Fig.7.
Fig. 7. Software Development Methodology
2) Agile Methods and Practices:
We can see the most used and implemented agile methodolo-
gies, with a higher score the Scrum methodology is the most
used with 56% and then follows the Hybrid methodology with
14% and so on, that is why we decided to use Scrum as it is
the most implemented at present [19]. It is the simplest and
adapts to any project, as shown in Fig.8.
Fig. 8. Agile Methods and Practices
B. ON THE METHODOLOGY
In this agile methodology of Scrum, I grant the continuous
advance of the software in concepts of its quality and simplic-
ity of use. The privileges of using this methodology is that it
promotes teamwork, user satisfaction, constant improvements
and moderate software deliverables [20]. Finally, it should
be noted that for the design of the software one could also
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 (IJACSA) International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications,
REFERENCES
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V. C ONCLUSIONS
The prototype of mobile applications for medical appoint-
ments, was to optimize speed and organization at the time of
separating an appointment, for better management of data on
each of the patients in hospitals. The system was designed to
save time and have a better regulation of patient information.
In the same way, Scrum has proven its effectiveness in case
software such as this one, so its application is highly recom-
mended. On the other hand, the use of the Scrum methodology
in the development of the system made possible the factor of
and the addition of new requirements. Therefore, the medical
care in hospitals that have implemented such software was
improved. With the development of this prototype, it is tried, in
a future, so that the implementation of the software in hospitals
that have not implemented this project yet, and thus to obtain a
better control of the medical appointments, that at the moment
are very prone to delay.
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Vol. XXX, No. XXX, 2014
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