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IS480 Team wiki: 2011T2 Panacea: Project Background

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Project Description

Our project aims to deliver a Clinic Management System with improved usability to our client, TSMP Medical Practice. Having a system to improve the services and lead time of certain functionalities and business scenarios in the daily operations of the clinic would improve the user's experience as compared to the current system that is in place.

Current systems are clearly lacking in terms of user-friendliness in that it forces users to follow a very serialized process, and limits the user's interaction with the program by making it inconvenient to accomplish certain tasks. This means that there is still manual recording of certain information from one function for use in another function. Also, the number of clicks taken to accomplish a task is increased due to this.

These will be described further in our storyboards for the business scenarios.

How the idea came about

Market Situation

According to Dr. Robin, there are about 2-3 new clinics opening in Singapore every month (including Medical and Dental). All of these clinics can only choose from a few existing clinic management software currently being provided. Examples include Clinic Assist and Medi 2000. Clinic Assist is supposedly used by over half of the clinics in Singapore.

Current System

The current system deployed in TSMP Medical Practice is called Clinic Assist and has many functionality which helps facilitate daily medical operations. Many of the functionalities are interlinked in terms of the data being stored. One thing we noticed is that the program has been developed for use not in just small clinics or medical practices (2-5 users) but has also been developed for use in large medical practices (> 100 users).

The vendor who released the system that is currently in place does not support hardware but only supports software. Meaning that when approached for the software, the vendor will propose either that the client takes uses their proposed hardware which can be used with their software, or that the client purchases his own hardware while the vendor will install the software on it. There is no ensuing hardware maintenance or support provided. The Client has to pay a fee of $100 per month for usage and support/maintenance.

As the technical adviser to TSMP Medical Practice, Andrew was the one who took charge of overseeing the deployment of the current system. Both Dr. Robin and Andrew have tried different clinical management systems, and have decided on taking the current one because it is the "best of the worst".

  • "The functionalities are not that different across all the current software, the only thing that set this system apart was that the User Interface was marginally better than the other, but the user interface is still very lousy."
  • Sponsor sees an opportunity to improve the situation in Singapore

Team Evaluation

After our sponsor approached us with this possible project, our team decided to determine what type of project this was by going down to the client's office to conduct interviews with the stakeholders, evaluate the existing system and current available software.

  1. TSMP Medical practice is a small clinic, with one doctor, two nurses and one accountant working in the premises. After some interviews with the nurses and observing their daily processes, we found that they were unhappy with the flow of some of the functionality in the current system they were using.
  2. We also sat down at their clinic to observe their way TSMP went about their daily operations and identified some ways in which the current system made their work more cumbersome.
  3. We were allowed to play around with the existing system and test out its functionality. While comprehensive, the product is neither easy to use nor is it interactive to use.
  4. Our team has evaluated an Open Source Clinical Assist System in Canada known as OSCAR. While the program is quite comprehensive in terms of functionality, it still has a very cluttered, dull and poor interface.

Problem Definition

After being given the opportunity to test out the current system and to evaluate an existing open source software, our team has decided that the main focus of all the clinic management systems that we have been exposed to and that our stakeholders are having issues with is usability.

Through our interviews and observations we also identified that nurses are not trained to be IT smart or savvy, instead, they are trained to be skilled in clinical skills. Doctors also do not like to interact with IT systems, they just need it to display information to them.

We have identified some problems from our initial meetings with our client:

  • Poor Usability
    • Many redundant clicks or processes
    • Very cluttered, dull, uninteresting and non-interactive interface
    • Difficult to navigate
  • Redundant Functionality
    • There are too many functionalities because the software has been designed for use in larger settings as well
  • Data loss
    • One function to be completed before another function is available
    • e.g. Updating of inventory, new patient to register. Need to exit inventory (unsaved data) before user can regiter new user

Value Definition

Our team has identified and recognized that there is actually an opportunity to improve the situation in this current market. A good example would be OSCAR which is provided free in Canada. As such, our team is proposing to develop an application which is focused on improved usability, and will be much easier to use than current systems that are in place. Our focus will be on an improved user interface. Also, our software will be released for free as well, as such, we will be using free software available in the market.

Commercialization

Our team sees an opportunity that our product is actually possible to be commercialized in the future and this project could serve as a good proof of concept for this business idea. By commercialization, we mean that the Medical Practice System can be released as an open source application developed by Team Panacea. This idea came about because we felt that the product would be well accepted by clinics or medical practices in Singapore or the Asia-Pacific region. Also, while the product may be free, we intend to charge a monthly maintenance fee for support and setup if it is commercialized.