Mobile-Augmented Smart Queue Management System for Hospitals

Management of high patient loads at tertiary hospitals presents a significant challenge in streamlining healthcare service delivery. Patients often need to queue up at various service areas in hospitals such as at registration, laboratory test and bill payment counters. Queue Management Systems (QMS) present a viable solution for patient management in such scenarios. However, conventional QMS are not generic by design, depend on hardware components or do not provide a comprehensive end-to-end solution that caters to the complete patient workflow. This paper presents a mobile-augmented smart queue management system that can be easily configured with an operational Hospital Management Information System (HMIS). It provides multiple interfaces for token generation and consumption on mobile devices integrated with hospital service counters, while using smart algorithms for token generation and allocation. The solution is comprehensive as that it caters to streamlined queue management across multiple hospital service areas using a single token for a patient, which improves patient experience and also helps the hospital administration track and optimize key performance metrics. We present the architectural and operational design of this system, along with an illustration of the use of this system in tracking productivity of service counter operators in a pilot implementation.