Software Engineering Dissertation: FMC Hospital Scheduling System

This software engineering dissertation focuses on developing an online scheduling system for Faruk Medical City (FMC) in Northern Iraq. The research addresses the current manual surgery room booking process, which involves paper forms and spreadsheets, and aims to create a web-based application to streamline the process. The project explores key dissertation questions such as the current system's gaps, how an IT solution can improve efficiency, ensure equipment availability, and handle emergency cases. The methodology includes ethical considerations, a literature survey, and the development of an IT artifact, which is a web application. The anticipated outcomes include a model scheduling system and the application of security measures to the web application. The project also involves testing the application, gathering feedback, and providing tutorial videos for surgeons. Literature survey includes references about appointment scheduling, web application security, and related topics. The project aims to enhance the efficiency and security of the surgery room booking process and provide a model for other medical centers.

Running head: SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
Software Engineering
Name of the student
Name of the university
Author’s name

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A. The Specification
Context of the Research:
The main context for this research involves the creation of an online scheduling system
for a hospital in Northern Iraq. Faruk Medical City (FMC) is one of the biggest hospitals in
Sulaimaniya city (Northern Iraq) that has 190 Doctors, 37 Departments, 11 Surgery rooms and
210 Beds. FMC performs a variety of complex surgeries. FMC provides various inpatient and
outpatient services to their clients such as daycare procedures, Intensive care services, pharmacy
services, Hospital hotel services, checkup centers, physical therapy centers, and sleep disorders
treatments. FMC conducts many different operations daily that require the engagement of the
surgery rooms in most of the hours. This is why they established a surgery room booking form
where doctors (surgeons) are requested to fill in some details about their patients, type of the
surgery, equipment required and date/time of the surgery. The request scheduling form will be
submitted to a staff member (medical assistant) who checks the availability of the rooms and the
availability of the equipment on the requested dates (currently performed manually using papers
and some Excel sheets/Word documents). Sometimes equipment quantity is not enough to be
used in all surgery rooms in the same time; therefore, the medical assistant needs to check and
make sure that the equipment requested is not used by other rooms during the requested date and
time. After the approval of the booking request, the medical assistant usually calls the patient and
would inform him/her about the appointment date for the surgery. The patient would be called a
second time as a reminder one or two days before the surgery.

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Problem statement:
FMC already has a well-structured network-based computerized system where they collect
different data about their patients and then use them in different activities during their treatment
process; however, their computerized system lacks a powerful scheduling tool to enable them to
book surgery rooms for performing surgeries.
The dissertation aims to build an IT solution to manage the surgery room’s booking requests in
FMC through the development of a web-based application: an online scheduling system where
all surgeons in the medical city have access and will be able to request date, time, equipment and
a room to conduct their surgeries. An option to send SMS messages to the patients will be added
to the application so that clients are informed immediately after the approval of the appointment.
As a reminder and if required, another scheduled SMS will be sent automatically within a
specific time prior to the surgery (will be set by the admin).
This IT solution can be used not only by the FMC but also by any other medical centers,
different service providers, or even agencies who have a similar booking/scheduling procedure.
Dissertation Questions:
There are four Key Dissertation Questions that will be explored:
 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?
 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?
 How can an IT solution ensure that the equipment requested by the surgeons is not in use
during the requested date/time in other rooms?

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 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?
Ethical Implications:
The project will involve surveying with surgeons anonymously to learn their opinions
about the current surgery room’s appointment system in FMC, as well as interviews with the
medical assistant who is responsible for the scheduling to identify the daily problems they face.
According to the Liverpool university rules, involving human in the research require ethical
approval and therefore ethical approval form has been submitted and approved by the GDI. The
participants (surgeons) have received the survey form and 10 results were received. A brief
interview with the medical assistant has been conducted in order to have a better overview of the
gaps in the current surgery rooms booking system. All participants in the survey and the
interview were kept anonymous based on their requests.
The anticipated outcomes:
The result that can be expected in this examination is a brief investigation of the present
framework for an appointment for the FMC medical procedure. Furthermore, it is likewise
expected that this examination will uncover the ambiguities of the present framework for
booking medical procedure rooms. Another normal result of this framework is to comprehend
the most proper methods that will encourage the formation of a framework just as a tangible
planning framework for booking medical procedure rooms in FMC just as giving a helpful
strategy inside the framework to manage dire cases.
This article will likewise incorporate a conversation with the medical assistant in FMC
who manages the booking procedure. One of the normal results, for this situation, will be a

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model. This model will be considered as a functional occurrence concerning the use of
appointment instruments that can be utilized by FMC, embraced by whatever other Medicare
systems that have a comparative booking framework. This exploration study will likewise
recommend the utilization of the online application under which a site will be created to
encourage the specialists of FMC in getting interview dates for utilizing medical procedure
rooms just as the necessary hardware.
The quality of the IT artifact will be ensured by performing tests on the application
before its release, in addition to testing its security using ethical hacking tools and running SQL
queries to test data entry and accuracy of appointment distribution. Anonymous interviews with
the surgeons and the medical assistant will also provide feedback on the artifact from a
qualitative approach.
Major Modifications:
No major modifications have been done on the proposal after the approval.
Research will be conducted on the hardware and software requirements for establishing a well-
secured server to handle the web- application. An admin panel will be developed to configure the
rooms, equipment, and surgeon’s list. The configuration will be used by the web application to
provide appointment dates.
A further key step is the development of the online application to provide appointment dates to
the surgeons based on different factors like the availability of the rooms and the required
equipment. In addition, security tests will be performed on the application to make sure that the
OWASP top 10 security risks are well-considered (cloudflare.com, 2019). Tutorial videos will be
prepared for the purpose of guiding the surgeons on the usage of the system. In order to receive

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feedback on the application, qualitative interviews will be conducted with the surgeons and the
medical assistant, who are directly dealing with the booking process. Lastly, the final source
codes will be submitted together with the dissertation document.
Literature Survey:
These sources offer similar models that provide essential background in the development
of this new scheduling tool. These materials also provide suggestions about potential problems
and how they may be resolved.
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 research is a good resource for this dissertation because it is about the optimization
of an appointment scheduling problem with unscheduled arrivals and reprioritization. This is a
good resource to have wide technical information about the appointment prioritizing techniques
and how to deal with appointment spots.
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 summarizing the current state of the art for securing web applications
from major flaws like SQL Injection and Cross-site scripting. Reviewing this resource will help
in providing more security to the web-based appointment system project.

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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 thesis prepared by ARAFA ANIS in Queen’s University submitted to the School
of Computing in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Master of Science. The
thesis explains many security measures that are required for securing a web-based application
and it provides many techniques and ideas about protection evaluation with security policies.
Etc. that can be useful in this dissertation.
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 provides a free appointment scheduling tool that can be used to obtain ideas
about web-design and using a calendar within the appointment scheduling system. This website
provides some similar idea to my IT solution like using calendar, notify clients and managing
staff members. Etc.
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
This is a good resource to have a clearer idea about using SMS and tokens in scheduling
systems. It also provides some good analysis between the traditional and SMS appointment
scheduling systems.

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De Ryck, P., Desmet, L., Piessens, F., & Johns, M. (2014). Primer on client-side web security.
Springer.
This book gives a detailed illustration of the consistent competition of the weapons
among the attackers and defenders of the Web ecosystem by discussing various kinds of attacks.
The authors of this book have provided a detailed description of several attacks, providing state
of the art research and traditional mitigation methods. State of practice in Web applications, for
each attack, has also been described, and appropriate practices to fight such attacks in the current
age have also been provided.
SAEED, F. A., & ELGABAR, E. A. (2014). Assessment of Open Source Web Application
Security Scanners. Journal of Theoretical and Applied Information Technology, 61(2), 281-287.
Currently, the web application security has become a very important area, of scholarship,
the efficient way to deal with this is the application of the web application scanner to find the
architectural vulnerabilities and weaknesses in the web application. The goal can be to use
OWASP Top 10 to contrast and compare the Web Application security scanners, and then the
best of them is determined. The study indicates that Skipfish and W3AF are the most appropriate
since they have 0.781676, and 0.79922 averages respectively. Therefore, web administrator or
developer, can use apply them together, select one, modify it through the addition of missing
feature and develop his/own application.
Mui, R., & Frankl, P. (2011, September). Preventing web application injections with
complementary character coding. In European Symposium on Research in Computer
Security (pp. 80-99). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.

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This article demonstrates the complementary character coding, which is a modern idea to
character level dynamic tainting that enables the effective and accurate taint propagation
transversely the margins of server components, as well as in between the servers and clients over
HTTP.
Sravani, D., & Saritha, M. B. (2017). Electro Visits in Primary Care, Schedulling Policies,
Modelling and its Analysis. Advances in Computational Sciences and Technology, 10(11), 3161-
3170.
The objective of this article is to enhance the primary care access. The article describes
about various many healthcare organizations which have presented electronic visits (or evisits) to
deliver patient–physician interactions through securing messages. The aim of this project is to
incorporate a system where visitors can get appointment for concern person by avoiding
queues and rush.
Leung, W., & Nøhr, C. (2019, March). Improving Access to Healthcare with On-Line Medical
Appointment System. In ITCH (pp. 271-276).
The objective of this paper is to update and improve the way toward making restorative
arrangements for little or medium size therapeutic facilities. A basic viewpoint to build social
insurance quality, effectiveness, adaptability and reduction cost.
CONDUCT OF THE PROJECT:
This project will analyse the currently available booking tools (E.g., Excel sheets, Word
documents) to understand the best techniques, and then utilize and develop this knowledge by
practically applying it to develop a web-based application for booking the surgery rooms.

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Through the analysis of the current method for giving appointments by FMC surgery section, the
gaps will be identified and addressed in the development of an IT solution. By conducting
interviews with the surgeons and the medical assistant from a qualitative approach, this project
will provide a unique insight into the problems in the current appointment distribution method.
Moreover, to find the best way of dealing with emergency cases, research will be conducted
regarding the current policy for dealing with urgent/emergency cases; and interviews will be
conducted with the general manager of the surgical department with this topic as a focus. The
model that will be developed through this project will be a practical example that can be used by
FMC and any other hospital that has a similar booking system in areas where an appointment
scheduling tool is required.
 Collect data from a qualitative approach by conducting anonymous interviews with the
surgeons in FMC and the medical assistant who is currently responsible for managing the
manual scheduling system.
 Research the latest techniques in securing a web-based application that will be used in
FMC.
 Critical analysis of the currently available surgery rooms booking system used by FMC.
 The main IT artifact will be a web-based application for managing the surgery room’s
bookings in FMC.
 Perform tests on the application before its release.
 Test the application’s security using ethical hacking tools.
 Run SQL queries to evaluate data-entry and accuracy.

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 Perform qualitative anonymous survey with surgeons and an interview with the medical
assistant who is currently responsible for managing the manually managed
booking/scheduling system.
 Before and after surveys using a Likert scale will be conducted with the surgeons and the
medical assistant who is currently and will remain responsible for managing the booking
system, to measure the efficiency of the new system in contrast to the current one.
B. The Design
Research methods for this project will include examining the latest techniques in securing a web-
based application to be used in FMC. In addition, data will be collected from a qualitative
approach by conducting anonymous interviews with the surgeons in FMC and the medical
assistant who is currently responsible for managing the manual scheduling system. There will
also be a critical analysis of the currently available surgery rooms booking system used.
The main IT artefact will be a web-based application for managing the surgery room’s bookings
in FMC.
The project will involve conducting interviews with surgeons in an anonymous manner to learn
their opinions about the current surgery room’s appointment system in FMC, as well as
interviews with the medical assistant who is responsible for the scheduling to identify the daily
problems they face. Research will be conducted on the hardware and software requirements for
establishing a well-secured server to handle the web- application. An admin panel will be
developed to configure the rooms, equipment, and surgeon’s list. The configuration will be used
by the web application to provide appointment dates.

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A further key step is the development of the online application to provide appointment dates to
the surgeons based on different factors like the availability of the rooms and the required
equipment. In addition, security tests will be performed on the application to make sure that the
OWASP top 10 security risks are well-considered (cloudflare.com, 2019). Tutorial videos will be
prepared for the purpose of guiding the surgeons on the usage of the system. In order to receive
feedback on the application, qualitative interviews will be conducted with the surgeons and the
medical assistant, who are directly dealing with the booking process. Lastly, the final source
codes will be submitted together with the dissertation document.
C. Statement of Deliverables
A live version of the app will be prepared in one of the domains for demonstration and testing
purposes. There will be a front-end web-application source code with complete documentation.
Back-end web-application will be accessed by an administrator (for instance medical assistant) to
manage the list of surgeons, list of available equipment and some details about the surgery
rooms. Also, the backend will provide the option to send SMS to the patients after the booking is
approved. There will be a research document on the different types of SMS services available in
Northern Iraq to evaluate which service to be used with the FMC web-based booking
application. Furthermore, there will be a review of current appointment tools and documents
used by MFC surgery section with analysis about the weakness and disadvantages. There will
also be a critical analysis on whether to use a server for hosting the web application or the
possibility of using one of the hosting companies available in the market. Tutorial videos to
guide surgeons about how to use the web application will be included. Finally, there will be
Analysis of data collected through qualitative interviews with the surgeons and the medical