Queensland Sleep Disorders Unit Patient Register

The Queensland Sleep Disorders Unit
Wollong, NSW Australia

The Queensland Sleep Disorders Unit (QSDU) specializes in diagnosing and treating sleep-related illness. As part of the unit's day-to-day operation, it conducts comprehensive sleep studies to diagnose and treat sleep illness. The Sleep Disorders Unit is based in Queensland, Australia and has over 5,000 clients from all over the state.

The QSDU Patient Register is used by QSDU staff members at seven remote locations all across Queensland. The QSDU Patient Register is a port and extension on an existing application and performs four key functions:

	Store all patient information
	Store all study information
	Provide reporting on patient and study information
	Allow patients to be booked in for sleep studies via a booking register

Add patient with AJAX auto-complete feature.

Staff at QSDU use the application in various ways. They can enter or edit patient details via the patient register. A customer search function has been incorporated so staff can look for details on a particular patient. When adding patient details, the system checks for duplicate patient records.

When staff are booking in a patient for a study, they can look in the bookings calendar to see which staff members are available and then assign sleep studies to the available staff. On the other side, the individual staff members use the staff calendar to see which bookings have been assigned to them.

Once a patient has been booked in and their study completed, staff must then record the clinical notes of the study in the register.

Custom modal popup dialog.

All information stored in the database is available via a number of custom reports which provide data on individual patients, patient history, patient studies, booking reports, staff reports, and billing and invoicing reports.

Application size and scope

One Mircrosoft SQL Server database comprises over 77 database tables, and 120 web pages. The Patient table is the largest, holding more than 5,000 records.

Approximately 15 users per month access QSDU Patient Register application. We estimate there are over 10,000 transactions per month.

The project

The project took one developer three full-time months. The Iron Speed Designer portion of the project took two months to complete.

Code extensions and customizations

We wrote approximately 3,500 lines of code customization for the application. This took approximately 50 hours. Part of the bookings register required a custom staff calendar to be written so that staff members could add their availability and view bookings that were assigned to them. This was a completely custom component built on top of the Iron Speed Designer business and data access layers.

Custom calendar and integrated AJAX flyout.

In addition, Google maps were integrated into the application so that staff can see the locations of their patients. Finally, there was extensive AJAX integration including predictive search and modal AJAX dialogs, using third-party components of ASP.NET Ajax.

Google maps integration.

Page layout customizations

We used the standard White design theme in Iron Speed Designer.

Iron Speed Designer impact

Before I started using Iron Speed Designer, I used another tool that took me one month to complete 10 percent of the application. After finding Iron Speed Designer, I was able to complete the rest of the project in three months. I estimate Iron Speed Designer saved me six man-months of development time, and at least $20,000 in costs.

The original estimate for the Queensland Sleep Disorders Unit Patient Register project was for six months — but we completed the project in three months using Iron Speed Designer.

The QSDU Patient Register project would have been feasible without Iron Speed Designer. However, because we used Iron Speed Designer, we were able to spend the leftover budget building an additional reporting component that had been planned for six months after the initial project was implemented.

Next steps

Development of the Queensland Sleep Disorders Unit Patient Register application is constant, and currently the wheels are in motion for a Google calendars integration projects to make booking information more accessible to third parties such as suppliers and doctors.

Our expansion plans also include adding at least two more sites and up to 30 more staff members, as well as providing public access to booking information.

About the developer

Phil Bernie has a Bachelor of Computer Science from University of Wollongong, Australia. He is also Microsoft Certified with his MCSD.

Phil has five years' development experience exclusively in ASP.NET, VB.NET C#.Net and SQL Server. Prior to starting his own company, he worked with the NSW State Emergency Service as a Senior Developer for two years, at NineMSN as a Senior Developer for a year, and at CSC as a developer for two years.

He currently runs his own development business, focusing on delivering high-quality software solutions to small/medium businesses.