Hospital Management Service
Revision History
| Date | Version | Description | Author |
| 05.12.2017 | Version 0.1 | Initial version | Dajana S. |
Table of Contents
3. Stakeholder and User Descriptions
10. Documentation Requirements
11. Appendix 1 - Feature Attributes
Vision
1. Introduction
1.1 Purpose
The purpose of this document is to specify and perceive the goals and features of this system named Hospital Management Service. It also states the various constraints which the system will be abide to. This document further leads to clear vision of the software requirements, specification and capabilities which are to be exposed to the development, testing team and end users of the software.
1.2 Scope
The system being described generally provides management of all activities among the hospital staff and the patients. The system proposes solution for the current public health care institutions in Republic of Macedonia, but could be used in any hospital, clinic, dispensary or pathology laboratory which needs computerized process, or if already has one - to improve it.
The current system in use in Macedonian public health facilities is a paper-based system. It is too slow and cannot provide updated lists of patients' data within a reasonable time frame. By using our system the over-time pay would be reduced and the number of patients that can be treated accurately would be increased.
Requirements statements in this document are both functional and non-functional.
1.3 Definitions, Acronyms and Abbreviations
Institution - referencing the institution which is using our system, it can be any health care institution, facility (like Hospital or Ministry of Health) that has bought a licence to use the system.
Patient - institution's patient can be any citizen of any age who is regulated as a patient in the institution according to the laws and its policy.
Appointment is an arrangement to meet someone at a particular time and place. In this context we are going to use it for meeting a doctor when a patient has health issues.
Appointment request is a request for scheduling an appointment (visit to the doctor), after which the patient chooses one of the offered time slots in order to have made an appointment.
GP is an abbreviation for General Practitioner, that is a doctor that implies prevention, education, care of the diseases and traumas that do not require a specialist, and orientate the patients towards a specialist when necessary. Each patient must have one GP.
Available time slot is the slot when a patient can get a scheduled appointment for their GP. It has to be free time slot when no other patients have scheduled appointments at the same GP. The average time expected would be 15 minutes, but it is going to be regulated by the system administrator, according to the institution's policy.
PIN - personal identification number, it is a unique identifier for each citizen.
Specialization - something that a doctor-specialist has studied for. He is expert for this and works only in this field.
1.4 References
Linked Open Drug Data from the Health Insurance Fund of Macedonia published in April 2013 as a conference paper from representatives from the Faculty of Computer Science and Engineering - Skopje, about which more information can be found at the following link: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/236273564_fig1_Figure-1-The-LOD-Cloud.
1.5 Overview
In the further part of the document will be given explanation of the current problems and needs of the system's users and stakeholders along with their detailed description (all users and stakeholders profiles), then our proposed solution for them is given. In the middle can be found the objectives of the system, what are the benefits of using it, but also alternative solutions are considered. In the second half, the description of the environment for which this system is built is specified, functional and non-functional requirements, as well as guides for end users.
2. Positioning
2.1 Business Opportunity
The feasibility of the project is analysed in this phase and business proposal is put forth with a very general plan for the project and some cost estimates. During system analysis the feasibility study of the proposed system is to be carried out. This is to ensure that the proposed system is not a burden to the institution using the system. For feasibility analysis, some understanding of the major requirements for the system are essential.
2.2 Problem Statement
| The problem of | affects | the impact of which is | a successful solution would be |
| Not having computerized all patients' and institution's details | staff, patients | slow access to patients' data and not having good overview of their health progress, neither having a good overview of the available institution's rooms and its available personnel at a given time | keeping all the data into the system which makes it be kept up to date and available anytime by few clicks. |
| Not having fast access to available time slots | doctors, patients | cannot find easily what time is convenient for both the patient and the doctor | patient makes appointment request after which the system according to doctor's schedule will offer available time slots out of which the patient can choose one. |
| Not having a full list of all available drugs | pharmacists | not being able to compare the drugs among each other and give the best adequate replacement if a drug is missing | providing a list of all drugs available in the Linked Open Drug Data from the Health Insurance Fund of Macedonia along with details for each, as well as having updated status for each in the medical stock. |
| Not easy handling test reports of the patients conducted in the pathology laboratory of the institution | laboratory assistants, doctors, patients | long waiting until the results are provided from the laboratory to the doctor or the patient | using the system, immediate results will become available to either the doctor or patient right away when they are completed. |
2.3 Product Position Statement
| For | the management of the institution, its current employees and patients |
| Who | need real time access to patients' records and test results, available rooms, available staff and drugs in the medical stock |
| Hospital Management Service | is a web application |
| That | is available online |
| Unlike | the current paper-based system |
| Our product | offers fast access to all the information required for following patient's health progress, available rooms and staff in the institution, as well as available drugs and real time test analysis results. |
3. Stakeholder and User Descriptions
3.1 Market Demographics
The system is targeting the health care institutions as one of the most important part of a functional society. The initial solution is intended for the public health institutions in Republic of Macedonia because of the main problem which is long waiting and disorder of patients' appointments. This system is designed to be a part of the process for organizing the appointments and having overview of patients' diagnosis, therapy and health progress all in one place. This system will help in gaining better sight in employees' working time and availability, which will reduce the amount of the over-time pay. By automation of the process of making appointments and eliminating the paper work, as well as immediate gathering test results and having fast access to patients' records, the efficiency of the employees per hour would rise up, therefore the number of patients that can be treated per hour would be increased. Potential users are the employees of the institution, as well as the patients who are regulated with the institution's policy.
3.2 Stakeholder Summary
| Name | Description | Responsibilities |
| System administrator | It is the user responsible to keep the system run as it should be. | Installing, maintaining, verify that peripherals are working properly, quickly arrange repair for hardware in occasion of hardware failure, monitor system performance, create a backup and recover policy, monitor network communication, update system as soon as new version of OS and application software comes out, implement the policies for the use of the computer system and network, setup security policies for users, password and identity management. |
| Patient | They are the people that need health care. Considering the facts who can become a patient in the institution, that is regulated with institution's policy which is outside the concern of the system. | View their healing history (appointments already made, diagnosis made and drugs prescribed) and view the schedule of future appointments if any. |
| Doctor - GP* | A doctor in the system can become any person that gets employed on the position doctor in the institution. | Update and review the appointments made to them, write prescriptions and add diagnoses. |
| Nurse | A nurse in the system can become any person that gets employed on the position nurse in the institution. | They help the doctors by observing and recording patients’ behavior, coordinating with other healthcare professionals for creating and evaluating customized care plans, analyzing the patient's symptoms and delivering analysis report to doctors, maintaining reports of patients’ medical histories, and monitoring changes in their condition, carrying out the requisite treatments and medications, ....., can review all the patients' data registered in the system and keep the availability of the rooms' number updated. |
| Pharmacist | Pharmacists are the people who take care of the medical stock (like pharmacy). | They need to take care to keep the data for the drugs availability in the institutions updated. They can also compare the drugs according to different criteria. |
| Laboratory assistant | Laboratory assistants are making different test for the patients like blood analysis. | They need to update the data of the test results in the system in real time. |
| Hygienist | Hygienists are the people who take care for the rooms to be always clean in order to be available for reuse. | They are not direct users of the system, just need to follow the schedule of room availability that the system will produce. |
| Doctor-specialist | Specialists are experts for a certain field in the medicine and work only in this field. | They are not direct users of the system, just need to follow the system schedule when a GP has sent a patient to them. |
| Responsible institutions | The responsible institutions are the sponsors for this system's development and the ones that are going to use it later on for their purposes. It could be the Ministry of Health or the institution itself. | / |
| System developers | System developers are those who are responsible for having the system completed successfully within the stipulated deadline (designers, coders, testers). | Maintain the system. |
3.3 User Summary
| Name | Description | Responsibilities | Stakeholder |
| System administrator | As an administrator the user is responsible for supervising and maintaining the system, as well as taking care the system to have all the data updated. | As system admin the user is able to review the reports regarding the hospital activities, update the type of rooms and departments that are needed, keep track of what type of doctors are missing in the hospital staff etc. | System administrator |
| Patient | Patients are the people that need health care. Considering the facts who can become a patient in the institution is regulated with its policy which is outside the concern of the system. | They can view their appointments already made and the ones that are scheduled in the future, as well as reports for the appointments. | Patient |
| Doctor - GP* | A doctor in the system can become any person that gets employed on the position doctor in the institution using this system. | Doctors will be able to add new patients and to update the appointments, as well as review the appointments. They can write recipes, add diagnoses and place/dismiss a patient. | Doctor - GP |
| Nurse | The nurses help the doctors. | They can list all the patients and update information for the patients' appointments and keep the availability of the rooms' number updated. They can enter the data for a patient instead of the doctors specialists. | Nurse, Doctor-specialist |
| Pharmacist | Pharmacists are the people who take care of the medical stock (like pharmacy). | They need to take care to keep the data for the drugs availability in the institutions updated. They can also compare the drugs according to different criteria. | Pharmacist |
| Laboratory assistant | Laboratory assistants are making different test for the patients like blood analysis. | They need to update the data of the test results in the system in real time. | Laboratory assistant |
3.4 User Environment
- The number of people included in one task will be mostly two - one patient and one doctor, but it can happen the nurses to help (like in emergency cases and similar).
- The expected time reserved for an appointment would be approximately 15 minutes, but this is changeable and can be regulated by the system administrator according to the institution's policy.
- The system can be used from any device that has internet connection.
- As a further upgrade of the system, a mobile version of this system could be available so that patients can make appointments fast and easily through an application.
- Our system can be used as a stand alone web application, but could be integrated with applications that provide fast and save paying or similar things according to the institution's policy.
3.5 Stakeholder Profiles
3.5.1 <Users>
| Representative | Doctors, Nurses, Patients |
| Description | The users will be able to make appointments and review them according to their type as explained under 3.2 |
| Type | Doctors, Nurses, Patients |
| Responsibilities | The employees and patients to be on time at their working places and to do their job. |
| Success Criteria | Coming to the doctor on time and give the patient appropriate medicament. |
| Involvement | |
| Deliverables | |
| Comments / Issues | Unavailability of the system |
3.5.2 <System administrator>
| Representative | |
| Description | The system administrator will supervise and maintain the system. He will keep a track if the rooms that are offered by the system are indeed free and will take care of staff's absences and replacements within the system. |
| Type | |
| Responsibilities | Taking care of the system, maintain it and solve problems and inconsistencies. |
| Success Criteria | The system is available when it should be and its state is consistent with the institution's state (same number of rooms available etc.) |
| Involvement | |
| Deliverables | |
| Comments / Issues |
3.5.3 <Institution using the system>
| Representative | |
| Description | They are going to be sponsors of the development of the system and then are going to use it for their own needs. |
| Type | Health institutions |
| Responsibilities | Finance the development of the system |
| Success Criteria | Successful integration of the system in institution's working |
| Involvement | |
| Deliverables | |
| Comments / Issues |
3.5.4 <System developers>
| Representative | |
| Description | System developers are those who are responsible for developing the system (designers, coders, testers). |
| Type | Developers |
| Responsibilities | Designing, coding and testing the system. |
| Success Criteria | Successful completion within the stipulated deadline. |
| Involvement | |
| Deliverables | |
| Comments / Issues |
3.6 User Profiles
3.6.1 < Неприлагодени на технологијата >
| Representative | Small amount of users, but equally important as the others. |
| Description | They have difficulties to adapt to the technology. Small amount of the users, usually people of older age. |
| Type | Patients |
| Responsibilities | Make an appointment |
| Success Criteria | Online help |
| Involvement | |
| Deliverables | |
| Comments / Issues | The institution could hire employee intended to help these users. |
3.6.2 <Стандардни корисници>
| Representative | Biggest percentage of the users. |
| Description | They can easily use the system and most probably will become active users (according to their needs, of course). |
| Type | Doctors, Nurses, Patients |
| Responsibilities | |
| Success Criteria | Easy to use and available withing working hours at least. |
| Involvement | |
| Deliverables | |
| Comments / Issues |
3.7 Key Stakeholder / User Needs
| Need | Priority | Concerns | Current Solution | Proposed Solutions |
| The system must enable entering data from test results like blood analysis. | Must | Laboratory assistants; Doctors; Patients | There is no real time sending of results and doctors and patients are waiting for them. | The results will be entered in the system right away so they will be available for everyone that needs them in real time. |
| Entering the diagnosis and therapy of a patient | Must | Doctors; Nurses; Patients | Writing that on paper. | Entering in the system so it can be available any time in just few clicks. |
| Entering data for free beds, rooms, staff, keep the information about them and the patients updated. | Must | System administrator | These data are there but are not fast accessible. | Fast accessible data anytime. |
| The system must enable sending request for an appointment | Must | Patient | There is no choice, the patient arrives and faces long waiting lines. | The system will enable the patient selecting a time slot for each pair of patient and doctor in a time that is convenient for both. |
| The system needs to enable getting reports for employees' payment and patients' records. | Should | Patients; Employees | They go to the archive office and wait there for such a document. | Such data for payment and health issues and medicines are stored into a database, the system reads from it and can show the document anytime with real updated data. |
| The system needs to enable reviewing a whole list of drugs. | Must | Pharmacists | They are checking in the store to see the availability of the drugs and don't have an option of comparison. | The system will offer review of all available drugs details, keep the number of availability of each in the stock updated, and will offer comparison regarding their price, similarity etc. |
| The system needs to send notification for upcoming appointment. | Should | Patients; Doctors | None. | The system will send a mail to remind the patient for the upcoming date and time slot of appointment. |
3.8 Alternatives and Competition
3.8.1 Current system for making appointments
This system which is in current use is available only for the institutions using it. Disadvantage is not having all the patients' records in one place, as well as the patients not being able to review their reports by them selves anytime.
4. Product Overview
4.1 Product Perspective
The application will be windows-based, self contained and independent software product. It is necessary all employees and the management of the institution which uses it to have access to it and credentials provided. Only the current employees have access to system as the type of user they are. For instance if a doctor stops working in a hospital, they lose the credentials for the system and can no longer access it.
4.2 Summary of Capabilities
Customer Support System
| Customer Benefit | Supporting Features |
| Easy to use. | Will be made simple so it can be used by ordinary citizens who have only basic technology knowledge. |
| Available in English with possibility to be upgraded with translations in another languages. | / |
| Available during the working hours of the institution, plus 99% of the remaining time. | Patients will be able to make an appointment request anytime. |
| The system must archive all the appointments made and the reports along with them. | For each appointment save its date, the patient, diagnosis and medication. |
| The system should be protected from unauthorized and unauthenticated access. | Each patient has access only to their respective data, and each doctor has access only to their patients' data. |
4.3 Assumptions and Dependencies
The patients of the system once registered will remain constant, unless they change the institution and the employees accounts will be changed along with the employees current status because the system can be used only by the institution's current employees and patients.
4.4 Cost and Pricing
4.5 Licensing and Installation
5. Product Features
Системот треба да овозможи креирање на јавни дискусии на некои теми.
Системот со секоја поставена порака треба да асоцира дата на поставување и личност која ја поставила.
Системот треба да овозможи некакво класифицирање на пораките по некаои критериуми.
Системот треба да овозможи поставување на пораки од предавачите кои ќе бидат достапни за сите студенти.
Системот треба да овозможи архивирање на сите пораки и нивна достапност до соодветните корисници.
Системот треба да овозможи приватност во комуникацијата студент- предавач.
Системот треба да им дозволи на студентите да праќаат пораки до предавачите.
6. Constraints
The system should be protected for access by unauthorized people. Only logged in users can see the details that they are supposed to.
7. Quality Ranges
The system needs to be easy to use. The system should be available in English with a possibility to be upgraded with new languages in future.
The system should be available online all the time within the hospital working hours.
The system should archive all appointments made, along with the reports for each of them.
8. Precedence and Priority
The most important feature is that the system should provide the list of appointments all the time during the hospital's working hours.
9. Other Product Requirements
9.1 Applicable Standards
Regarding the fact that the system will be used within the hospital environment, it needs to be easily maintainable and portable if needed.
9.2 System Requirements
There mustn't be limitation of the number of users who are online at the same time.
There mustn't be limitation of the number of appointment requests send by a patient.
The user must make an appointment only to the doctor who is user's GP.
9.3 Performance Requirements
The number of patients in a certain period of time intended for appointment must be limited to maximum one. If it is noted that there is big demand for appointments (for example in winter during some flu period) then the system will provide the institution to be able to notice the frequency, so they will know that they should hire new employees (for example doctors).
9.4 Environmental Requirements
If users need some help (they have technical problems or they don't know how to do what they want) they can use the Online Help.
10. Documentation Requirements
10.1 User Manual
All current employees of the institution using the system will get username and password. Of course the password can be changed later on. The patients will be able to create new account - to register.
10.2 Online Help
It is predicted the system to offer online help. It means that there will be a page where will be written some general guidelines for using the system, there will be a part FAQ (frequently asked questions), and for more complex problems like not being able to login and similar technical problems will be intervened by system administrators.
10.3 Installation Guides, Configuration, Read Me File
The system for the user will represent a webpage where with its username and password can login and use it from any browser (Firefox, Opera, Chrome etc.).
10.4 Labeling and Packaging
11. Appendix 1 - Feature Attributes
11.1 Status
| Proposed | The system must be available online. The system has to response to the patient with an available slot. The system must allow the doctors to have a review of their appointments. The system has to sort the patients' records by date. |
| Approved | The system has to be protected from unauthorized and unauthenticated access. Each slot must be unique for each patient at 1 doctor. The system has to allow the patients to send appointment request. The system has to keep a track of the date when an appointment has been made. The system must be easy to use for people of all ages. The system must provide option for upgrading it in another language for those who are not familiar with English language. |
| Incorporated | / |
11.2 Benefit
| Critical | The system must be available online. The system has to response to the patient with an available slot. Each slot must be unique for each patient at 1 doctor. The system must allow the doctors to have a review of their appointments. The system has to be protected from unauthorized and unauthenticated access. |
| Important | The system has to allow the patients to send appointment request. The system has to keep a track of the date when an appointment has been made. The system must be easy to use for people of all ages. The system must provide option for upgrading it in another language for those who are not familiar with English language. |
| Useful | The system has to sort the patients' records by date. |
11.3 Effort
The team consists of two students who are developing this project as a part of course curriculum supervised by one professor.
11.4 Risk
The risk is the system to be developed but never be used by some institutions.
11.5 Stability
The development of the system should not contain major concessions because we have our goals specified in the first phase and we us team will give our best to accomplish all the initial ideas and agreements given in the documents which are made during the first phase of software development.
11.6 Target Release
It is expected this system to have its first initial release, with basic requirements done in January 2018.
11.7 Assigned To
We will divide the tasks, clearly specifying what is expected of us to do, what are the allowed concessions, and to what extent and for how long it is planned the task to be finished. In consultation with each other, as well as with the supervising authority, each problem will be overcome.
11.8 Reason
The reason for the development of this system, as mentioned before, is the simplification of the whole process of making appointments, perspicuous schedule of any doctor at a certain time period. That will help in avoiding unnecessary waiting for appointments, help staff have a better review of a patient's illness, given therapy and health progress.
