Medical Clinic Scheduling System
Need:
A regional hospital system and school of medicine managed schedule and provider changes for member clinics using paper forms and fax machines. The process was cumbersome and error prone causing unacceptable delays in the coordination of clinic schedules with the staff responsible for setting patient appointments.
Solution:
Provide an application capable of maintaining clinic scheduling and provider information in a central data repository. The user interface should require minimal training and actively assist users with the entry of accurate and reliable data.
Implementation:
New web application development tools were selected for one of the hospital system’s existing platforms. The application was developed in PHP to run on an IBM i application server using Apache and Zend Server. Bootstrap was used as the component and style framework for the user interface.
Impact:
Users were able to start using the web application with almost no training due to the familiar terminology and organization gleaned from the paper forms in developing the new application’s flow. Extensive inclusion of help dialogs and informative error messages also helped to reduce the learning curve. The key outcome for the customer was the increased flexibility and accuracy in setting patient appointments since changes to clinic schedules and providers could be submitted and processed in the same day instead of the previous three business days allotted.
End-User Inventory Management System
Need:
A nationwide financial services company conducted their annual physical inventory of equipment in the possession of central office and field personnel using paper receipts distributed by hand, fax, and email. In addition, any equipment assignments or returns done throughout the year were handled with the same cumbersome process.
Solution:
Develop a new application to deploy to end-users for digitally handling both the annual inventory physical inventory tasks as well as any ad-hoc tasks occurring throughout the year. The application must be able to work in limited connectivity situations.
Implementation:
A Progressive Web App was developed in Angular 7 for deployment to any browser available to the end-users on phones, tablets, laptops, or desktop computers. For devices with camera capabilities, the application allowed for scanning of asset tags and serial number barcodes to facilitate entry and identification of inventory items. All features of the application could be used while the application was disconnected with transactions queued in a service worker until a connection to the web server was available. Bi-directional access to data from the company’s inventory system was made possible through a web API developed as part of this effort.
Impact:
The physical inventory from the year prior to deployment of this application took five man-months to complete including personnel to verify all of the equipment and inventory technicians to enter the resulting information. The new PWA made it possible to complete the next inventory in one-fifth of the time while also correcting data entry errors made in previous years.
Location App for Field Inspectors
Need:
A safety inspection firm used a custom mobile application developed for a specific platform to indicate locations where safety personnel should be scheduling inspections. The dependence on a single platform to use the application meant that most inspectors were required to carry multiple devices to utilize the functionality provide by the app in their daily routines.
Solution:
Develop a Progressive Web App that would make it possible to deploy the application to any browser available on the inspectors’ phones, tablets, or laptops. For most inspectors, this meant that a single device could be used to perform all of their duties.
Implementation:
The new application was developed using Angular with the resulting Progressive Web App deployable through a web server for access from any browser available to the safety inspectors. An additional pain point regarding data availability while offline was also resolved by the new application. A survey of the devices preferred for use by the inspectors was used to create a test suite to confirm that the application would work on as many as possible.
Impact:
All safety inspectors were able to drop the device previously used for the old application from their personal inventory. With the dramatic difference in the ease of deploying the new application and any updates, it was possible to immediately address a backlog of feature requests that had been previously delayed due to deployment difficulties of the old application.
Company Intranet (CMS)
Need:
A company’s intranet had become outdated both in technology and information. Any changes to site content had to be made by IT personnel using a very difficult and limited tools. Numerous file shares were being employed by users to circumvent the problems with maintaining intranet content.
Solution:
Replace the current intranet with a new content management system that allowed users to add and edit information to which they had authority. Ensure that the new CMS was robust enough to host complex content, such as secured pages, videos, and web forms, if needed.
Implementation:
The Umbraco Content Management System was selected to replace the outdated intranet tools. The new site was deployed using a single solution from Visual Studio 2017 to the Microsoft IIS web server. This CMS allowed creation of dozens of new templates to help users add content to the site without needing to involve IT personnel. Additional templates and content can be added at any time without disrupting use of the site.
Impact:
The new intranet site quickly became home to all of the relevant information previously hosted on the defunct site and to volumes of new content. The site is once again the company’s central location for serving shared information. Each department maintains their own content using authorized accounts to manage access to the editing system. End-users have been extremely receptive to the new intranet with a ten-fold increase in usage.
Electronic Data Interchange (EDI)
Need:
A regional retail sales franchise was processing merchandise purchasing, fulfillment, and billing using paper documents transmitted by fax or email. All of the tasks to be performed by the retailer were manual, expensive, and error prone.
Solution:
Implementing EDI between the stores, warehouses, and vendors would allow for highly efficient use of systems to handle the purchasing, fulfillment, and billing processes. The ability to produce and consume EDI transactions would be added to the retailer’s existing management systems.
Implementation:
Custom logic was added to the company’s JDA Merchandise Management System to handle creating, sending, receiving, and processing EDI transactions for purchasing, fulfillment, and billing. The system extensions were coded in free-form RPG using embedded SQL for data access. EDI documents were transmitted by SFTP with convention-based naming to facilitate automation. All transactions initially required approval but were later automated completely if transaction value fell within configurable guidelines.
Impact:
Simply adding the EDI transactions to the existing system would have improved the inventory processes dramatically. However, by further customizing the system, it was possible to automate most transactions thereby realizing significant cost-savings and practically eliminating errors. When an automated process fell outside of normal ranges, appropriate notifications were delivered allowing for approval or adjustment as necessary without circumventing the system.
Virtual Animal Control System (VACS)
Need:
A system was needed to provide animal control shelters the ability to manage their pet inventory and health and to report on specific information needed for adoptions and vaccinations. The number of animals coming into animal shelters is rising and keeping up with them has become a challenge.
Solution:
The Virtual Animal Control System (VACS) was developed in .NET to provide companies the ability to organize and overlook everything happening in their animal shelter. VACS has user and employee account creation and login capabilities, giving users the opportunity to see which animals are up for adoption with very precise details about the animal. The user can review the animal history and decide on which animal he or she would like to adopt. It also has the capability for a user to put up an animal for adoption. An application is filled out by the user and then is submitted for approval.
The employees are given a little more in-depth functionalities like reviewing applications that are submitted by users and viewing the number of animals in the shelter with details. It also shows the capacity the animal shelter has and how many spots are available in the shelter. Users are notified upon application approval or rejection. VACS also provides the ability to view reports that tell you the number of vaccinations given to animals by breed or Animal ID which is given to each animal that is brought in. Other reports include vaccination reminder reports and animal detail reports.
Implementation:
With an HTML, CSS, and Bootstrap powered UI, VACS gives a very user-friendly feel. All functionalities are friendly enough to be self-taught by most users and staff. All the data handling is done in Microsoft SQL Server and the language used for data manipulation is SQL. The software was developed using .NET Framework and C#.
Impact:
Animal shelter employees were able to manage animals coming in and going out of the shelter affectively. A report dashboard was created giving all employees of the shelter the ability to browse through and see which vaccines were given to the animals and when. Anyone trying to adopt an animal can now view it before coming to the shelter to make a decision. The process for adopting and surrendering animals became tremendously faster giving the employees an ease for managing and helping animals find good homes.
