Research Proposal: IT Solution for FMC Surgery Room Booking System

This research proposal outlines the development of an IT solution for managing surgery room reservations at Faruk Medical City (FMC) in Sulaimaniya, Iraq. The project aims to create a web-based application to improve the current manual scheduling system, which relies on paper forms and spreadsheets. The proposed system will allow surgeons to request room bookings, specify equipment needs, and receive SMS notifications. The research will involve qualitative interviews with surgeons and medical assistants to understand the existing system's gaps and gather requirements. The IT artifact will be an online system with an admin panel for managing rooms, equipment, and surgeon access. Security will be a key focus, with ethical hacking and SQL queries used for testing. Evaluation will involve pre and post-surveys to assess the system's effectiveness and a resource plan that details human and software resources. Risk assessment includes data loss prevention, and quality assurance involves pre-release testing and ethical hacking. The project will deliver front-end and back-end code, documentation, and tutorials. The project also includes a literature review on appointment scheduling and web application security, and the final deliverable will provide suggestions for further study and technology use.

Running Head: RESEARCH PROPOSAL
RESEARCH PROPOSAL
Name of the student
Name of the university
Author note

1RESEARCH PROPOSAL
The Project Aims and Objectives:
The aim of this thesis is to develop an IT solution for the management of FMC
surgery room reservation requests via the creation of an online-based application, a web
scheduling program where all surgeons in the medical city have access and can request date,
time, equipment and room for their surgery.
Faruk Medical City (FMC) is one of Sulaimaniya City (Northern Iraq)'s largest
hospitals with 190 doctors, 37 departments, 11 surgical rooms and 210 beds. FMC performs a
variety of activities such as:
 Cardiac and Open Heart Surgeries
 Vascular Surgeries
 Thoracic Surgeries
 Pediatric neurosurgery
 Endoscopic assisted surgeries
 Microscopic urology surgery
 Laparoscopic Surgery
 General Nephrology Service
 Kidney Transplants
Apart from the above mentioned surgeries, FMC also has Daycare procedures,
Intensive care services, pharmacy services, Hospital hotel services, checkup centers, physical
therapy center, sleep disorders treatments etc.
FMC already has a well-structured computerized network-based system in which they
collect different data about their patients and use them during their treatment process in

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different activities, but their computerized system lacks a powerful scheduling method to
allow them to book surgery rooms for surgery. An option will be added to the application to
send SMS messages to the patients so that clients are notified immediately after the
appointment is accepted. As a reminder, another scheduled SMS will automatically be sent
(will be set by the admin) within a specific time before the surgery.
Step Short Description
Dissertatio
n
Question(s)
1. What is the current method that FMC applies for providing surgery
room’s appointments to their surgeons, and what are the gaps in
this system?
2. How can an IT solution improve the efficiency of the surgery
room’s appointment system in providing a sufficient and error free
appointment date/time to conduct their surgeries?
3. How can an IT solution ensure that the equipment requested by the
surgeons are not in use during the requested date/time in other
rooms?
4. How can an IT solution deal with emergency cases when all rooms
are reserved and what should be the procedures for dealing with
urgent surgeries?
Research
Methods
 Collection of data in a qualitative style by conducting confidential
interviews with the surgeons in FMC and the medical assistant
who is currently responsible for managing the manual scheduling
system.
 Researching the current techniques in securing an online-based
application that will be used in FMC.
 Critical evaluation of the currently available surgery rooms
booking system used by FMC.
IT Artefact  The central IT artefact will be an online-based system for
managing the surgery room’s bookings in FMC.
Evaluation  Performing evaluation on the system prior to its release.
 Testing the security of the application using ethical hacking tools.
 Running SQL questions to assess the entry of the data and their

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accuracy.
 Conducting interviews that are qualitative and confidential
anonymous with surgeons and the medical assistant who is
currently responsible for managing the manually managed
booking/scheduling system.
 Pre and post surveys by the use of a Likert scale will be done with
the surgeons and the medical assistant who is currently and will
remain responsible for managing the booking system, to know the
efficacy of the new system in contrast to the current one.
Project Outline:
The research would include conducting confidential interviews with surgeons to
obtain their views on the FMC appointment structure of the existing surgical room; as well as
with the medical assistant responsible for the scheduling to recognize the everyday problems
they face. Hardware and software specifications will be investigated to create a well-secured
server to handle the web application. To configure the list of rooms, equipment and surgeons,
an admin panel will be created. The web application will use the setup to provide the date of
the appointment.
The key step is to establish the online application to provide the surgeons with
appointment dates based on various factors such as room availability and the equipment
required. Additionally, security checks on the framework will be conducted to ensure that the
top 10 security risks of OWASP are well understood (cloudflare.com, 2019). To order to
instruct the surgeons on the use of the device, instructional videos will be prepared.
Qualitative interviews will be held with the surgeons and the medical assistant who deal
directly with the booking process in order to provide input on the submission. Eventually,
together with the dissertation text, the final source codes will be submitted.

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Literature Survey / Resources’ List:
Borgman, N., Vliegen, I., Boucherie, R. and Hans, E. (2017). Appointment scheduling
with unscheduled arrivals and reprioritization. Flexible Services and Manufacturing
Journal, 30(1-2), pp.30-53. DOI: 10.1007/s10696-016-9268-0
This work is a good resource for this study because it is about managing the scheduling
problem of an appointment with unplanned arrivals and reprioritization. This is a good
resource for having extensive technical information on appointment prioritization methods
and how to manage appointment places.
Deepa, G. and Thilagam, P. (2016). Securing web applications from injection and logic
vulnerabilities: Approaches and challenges. Information and Software Technology, 74,
pp.160-180. DOI: 10.1016/j.infsof.2016.02.005
A literature review that summarizes the current state of the art to secure web applications
from major flaws such as SQL Injection and Cross-site scripting. Reviewing this resource
will help make the web-based appointment system project more secure.
Anis, A. (2018). Securing Web Applications with Secure Coding Practices and Integrity
Verification. [online] Qspace.library.queensu.ca. Available at:
https://qspace.library.queensu.ca/handle/1974/23984 [Accessed 18 Sep. 2019].
This is a paper submitted to the School of Computing by ARAFA ANIS at Queen's University
in compliance with the criteria for a Master of Science degree. The thesis discusses what
security measures needed to secure a web-based application and provides security policies
with many strategies and ideas on safety assessment. In this dissolution, Etc. can be useful

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Picktime.com. (2019). Online Free Appointment Scheduling Software | Booking
Software | Calendar Management System | Picktime. [online] Available at:
https://www.picktime.com/ [Accessed 24 Sep. 2019].
This website offers a free scheduling service for appointments that can be used within the
appointment scheduling system to get ideas about web design and use a calendar. The
website gives my IT department a similar idea, such as using schedule, notifying clients and
managing staff members. Etc, that's it.
Chimaladinne, L. and Sonti, N. (2017). Automatic token allocation system through
mobile in primary care. 2017 International Conference on Energy, Communication,
Data Analytics and Soft Computing (ICECDS). DOI: 10.1109/ICECDS.2017.8390181
Having a clearer idea of using SMS and tokens in scheduling systems is the main point of the
above resource. It also offers some good analysis between the scheduling systems for
conventional and SMS appointments.
Scholarly Contributions of the Project:
This assignment will evaluate the recently available reservation resources (excel
sheets, word documents, etc.) to identify the best procedures and then use and expand this
information by digitally applying it to create a web-based application to reserve the surgery
rooms. The gaps are identified and are addressed in the progress of an IT solution via the
analysis of the recent method for FMC surgery appointments. This research will provide a
unique insight into the issues in the existing appointment distribution method by conducting
interviews with the surgeons and the medical assistant from a qualitative perspective.
In addition, to determine the best way to cope with emergencies, analysis will be
carried out on the circumstance about what the current law should be for working with
emergency or urgent cases, and interviews will be held with the department's general

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manager concentrating on this subject. The model to be developed via this project will be a
practical example that can be used by FMC and any other hospital with similar booking
system areas where the scheduling tool for appointments is required.
Description of the Deliverables:
• Front-end web-application source code with full documentation (I'm
preparing a live version for demonstration and testing purposes in
one of the domains).
• Back-end web application to be obtained by an admin (most likely a
medical assistant) to handle a chart of doctors, a roster of equipment
available and some surgical room details. Also, after approval of
booking, the backend will provide the option to send SMS to
patients.
• Research document on the different types of SMS services available
in Northern Iraq to determine which service to use with the booking
application based on the FMC site.
• Analysis of existing appointment methods and records with review of
weakness and drawbacks used by the MFC surgery team.
• Critical analysis of whether to use a server to host the web
application or whether to use one of the hosting companies on the
market.
• Tutorial clips on how to use the web application to direct surgeons.
• Review of data collected on feedback regarding the current web-
based application by qualitative interviews with the surgeons and the
medical assistant.
• Suggestions for further study and technology use in various contexts.

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Evaluation Criteria:
The assessment procedure will involve pre-release testing on the application to
determine the application's weakness as well as the areas which need to be strengthened. In
order to analyse the security of the application while using various hacking tools which are
ethical and that can help detect violations of confidentiality. Several SQL queries will be
executed to check the data entry and to ensure that not more than the limited appointments set
by the medical assistant are distributed. In addition, confidential interviews with surgeons
will be performed and the medical assistant will receive feedback on the success of the
program as well as any further changes to be found.
To further assess the effect of both the system, certain surveys will also be performed
with the physicians and the nursing assistant to know their opinions on the effectiveness of
the existing appointment process and will be performed again after the new system has been
introduced. Thus; the artifact's efficiency will be evaluated by checking the system's
functionality, evaluating its reliability, data entry and their accuracy, the data that is
qualitative data from interviews, pre and post surveys that used a Likert scale, and comparing
samples of the waiting periods in new and existing systems.

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Resource Plan:
In terms of the human resources, certain interviews with the surgeons and the FMC
medical assistant will be performed anonymously. As far as software is concerned, the
express edition of Microsoft SQL server and Visual Studio 2017 will be used to write the
codes and prepare the database.
Risk Assessment:
The only danger that could be correlated with the project background is the disruption
or loss of data on the server (because of various reasons such as hardware failure or the
power cut that often occurs in the city) that could create a lot of patient difficulties. In the
event of data damage or loss, new timelines have to be made and new appointment schedules
have to be delivered to use surgical rooms, which will have a negative impact on the
hospital's reputation.
The FMC's IT manager can use either a local server to host the request with a
requirement of reliable backup preparation and a better disaster recovery program or use
cloud hosting in one of the trusted companies such as Amazon. The future reservations will
be periodically printed and kept in a safe place as an extra precaution.
Quality Assurance:
The consistency of the relic will be assured by conducting checks on the program
prior to release, in addition to checking its protection through ethical hacking software and
performing SQL queries to evaluate data input and reliability of engagement delivery.
Personal interviews with both the doctors and the clinical assistant will also provide input on
the artefact from the qualitative method.

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References:
Anis, A. (2018). Securing Web Applications with Secure Coding Practices and Integrity
Verification. [online] Qspace.library.queensu.ca. Available at:
https://qspace.library.queensu.ca/handle/1974/23984 [Accessed 18 Sep. 2019].
Borgman, N., Vliegen, I., Boucherie, R. and Hans, E. (2017). Appointment scheduling with
unscheduled arrivals and reprioritization. Flexible Services and Manufacturing Journal, 30(1-
2), pp.30-53. DOI: 10.1007/s10696-016-9268-0
Chimaladinne, L. and Sonti, N. (2017). Automatic token allocation system through mobile in
primary care. 2017 International Conference on Energy, Communication, Data Analytics and
Soft Computing (ICECDS). DOI: 10.1109/ICECDS.2017.8390181
cloudflare.com. (2019). What Is OWASP? What Are The OWASP Top 10?. [online]
Available at: https://www.cloudflare.com/learning/security/threats/owasp-top-10/ [Accessed
8 Oct. 2019].
Deepa, G. and Thilagam, P. (2016). Securing web applications from injection and logic
vulnerabilities: Approaches and challenges. Information and Software Technology, 74,
pp.160-180. DOI: 10.1016/j.infsof.2016.02.005
Picktime.com. (2019). Online Free Appointment Scheduling Software | Booking Software |
Calendar Management System | Picktime. [online] Available at: https://www.picktime.com/
[Accessed 24 Sep. 2019].