Doctime, a medical appointment scheduling platform

Doctime

Appointment scheduling platform for health centers and their clients

About the client

Our client is a healthcare startup whose main goal is to unite medical centers within one platform and provide healthcare workers and their patients with a convenient tool to manage their bookings.

Details

  • Date:2022

PixelPlex has developed an online service with an in-built marketplace where medical centers can add their schedule and provide information about doctors and appointments, and patients can book appointments with a specific specialist and receive exclusive benefits.

Team

  • UI/UX designer

  • Business analyst

  • Project manager

  • DevOps

  • Developers

    4

  • QA engineer

  • SEO specialist

Challenges

The client, together with our team, conducted business analysis and UX research. Here is what we found:

  • 1

    Up to 15% of patients fail to arrive for a scheduled appointment

    Medical centers lose money, and other patients don’t receive timely help.

  • 2

    In 90% of cases clinics and their patients use phone calls to make appointments

    This is an outdated, inefficient and time-consuming approach.

  • 3

    Medical centers have to constantly invest in advertising

    Most clinics have their own platforms and invest a lot of time, money and effort in order to promote them and attract clients.

  • 4

    Some clinics experience lack of digitization

    This hinders the development of their business, and they lose out competitively to more innovative clinics.

  • 5

    There is no single loyalty program and discount management system

    Each clinic has to develop its own loyalty program, and it can be a challenge to implement and update it on a regular basis.

Project goals

We aimed to create an appointment booking platform that would help health centers minimize the percentage of patient no-shows and, as a result, reduce financial loss and equipment downtime.

We also set a goal to find ways of integrating Doctime with software already in use in medical centers. This would allow them to expand their online presence, promote their services across multiple platforms, and conveniently manage appointments without having to learn new software.

Work done

  • Web platform with mobile responsive design

  • Admin panel for medical centers

  • User panel for patients

  • Integration with bank payment system

  • Integration with medical centers’ own software

Doctime, a medical appointment scheduling platform

Solution

We have created Doctime, an online platform that provides access to medical services and helps medical centers tackle the problem of patient no-shows through the introduction of a partial prepayment system.
With our solution, medical centers will have the ability to manage business, services, and prices as well as set prepayment rates 24/7/365, while patients can enjoy fast and convenient online bookings and receive discounts.

Tech stack

  • NestJS
  • PostgreSQL
  • RabbitMQ
  • TypeORM
  • AWS
  • Next.js
  • TypeScript

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Admin panel for medical centers

We have developed an intuitive web panel for administrators of medical centers so that they can:

Manage appointments

  • Create and view bookings
  • Track prepayment statistics
  • Automatically receive information about appointments made via Doctime and other integrated software
The UI of the appointments management page

Manage information about doctors

  • Add newly hired doctors
  • Set work status
  • Edit info about the services the doctors provide
The UI of the page that demonstrates information about doctors

Create doctors’ work schedule

  • Add and edit doctors’ schedules
  • Sort doctors by specialization and work status
The UI of the doctors' schedule page

Manage the pricing of the services provided

  • Set discount percentage
  • Define necessary prepayment amount
The UI of the page for managing the pricing of the services provided

Edit the clinic info

  • Add, edit, or remove the clinic’s logo
  • Change information about opening hours
  • Edit description and contacts
The UI of the flexible schedule page

Loyalty program

Our client wanted to create a system where medical centers could easily implement their own loyalty programs and offer discounts to their patients. With Doctime, they are able to set discounts for their services, which can vary depending on the season and the workload of the medical center.

The grey percent symbol on a blue background

Onboarding process

We made it extremely simple for medical centers to join the platform. 85% of the process is done electronically and remotely.

This is what they need to do to get onboard:

  • 1

    Register on the platform and fill in the company details

  • 2

    Add a list of services and doctors’ schedules

  • 3

    Sign a digital contract and upload documents

  • 4

    Communicate with a Doctime manager to correctly fill in the clinic’s account

  • 5

    Connect to an acquiring bank

  • 6

    Done! The clinic is connected and ready for patients

How Doctime guarantees that patients WILL show up for their appointments

  • We implemented a prepayment system

  • Medical centers themselves set their preferred deposit amount

  • The deposit is included in the overall cost of the chosen service

  • After the patient clicks the "Make an appointment" button, the deposit amount is pre-authorized and held on their bank card

  • If the patient cancels the booking more than 48 hours before the visit to the doctor, the pre-authorization is canceled and the deposit is not deducted from the card

  • If the patient cancels the booking less than 48 hours before the visit to the doctor, the deposit is transferred to the medical center and becomes non-refundable

The photo of a doctor on a green and blue background

User panel for patients

The registration process for patients is fast and convenient, as they only need to provide their phone number. The functions that we have enabled allow users to:

Manage their profile

  • Edit personal information
  • Add other patients to their profile such as a spouse, children, parents, siblings, or other relatives
  • Edit other patients' data and/or delete their profiles
The UI of the user profile management page

Manage credit cards

  • Attach their credit cards for instant payments
  • Assign a default credit card
  • Delete credit card information
The UI of the payment management page

Manage their own medical appointments

  • See the list of clinics and their locations, and choose the closest one
  • Check their appointments and related information
  • Make a prepayment
  • Change or cancel an appointment
  • Print out a hard copy of the appointment information
The UI of the medical appointment management page

Manage their “Favorites” list

  • Add services, clinics, or doctors to “Favorites” or delete them from the list
  • View the entire list with additional information
  • Check doctors or medical centers on a map
The UI of the favorite list page

Make an appointment through “Flexible schedule”

  • Send a request to the clinic indicating the preferred time of the visit in case all time slots are full
  • Get a response from the clinic administrator on whether they found time for your visit
  • Receive detailed information about your visit in case of a successful booking
The UI of the flexible schedule page

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Integration with medical centers’ existing software

As a custom software developer, we do not want to create difficulties. On the contrary, we strive to make people's lives easier and more enjoyable. Instead of insisting on a complete transition to our platform, we are enabling medical centers to integrate their own software with our solution.

We will be honest: the integration process was not easy. Our developers encountered the following challenges:
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Doctime functionality differed from the functionality of medical centers’ applications.

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We customized Doctime to make it a universal solution suitable for different clinics and their software.

red cross

The system used by the clinics didn’t have the required fields for transferring prepayments.

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green check

We added new fields for transferring prepayments and enabled the “prepayment” function.

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Some medical centers don’t use a server, but a local database.

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We made sure that our system supported this approach as well.

Solving these difficulties has only made us stronger. In the end, we have helped a number of medical centers integrate with Doctime so they can still use their own software while automatically receiving orders from Doctime.

At the same time, there are no double bookings, since the systems are synchronized and work together perfectly.

Full digitization for paper-based booking

Some clinics still do not use any scheduling software. This lack of digitization results in human errors such as double booking, overbooking, missed appointments, and incorrect data entry, and a lot of time spent inefficiently on phone calls and manual recording.

When collaborating with Doctime, we provide such clinics with all the tools they need to go fully digital.

Integration with bank payment system

Together with the bank, we developed a module that connects Doctime and the bank's payment system. The module allows users to make payments through entering card data or just in one click if the card has been attached.

We have applied a two-stage payment mechanism, which allows us to divide the process into:

  • 1

    Checking the solvency of the bank card that holds the deposit

  • 2

    Charging off funds 48 hours before the appointment

Each medical center joining the platform signs a contract with the bank. They then receive a separate payment page and their patients can make appointments at their centers using the Doctime platform.

Doctime as an advertising tool

By joining the Doctime platform medical centers can boost their visibility online and attract clients who have never used their services before.

Since patients can search for services by name, as well as check doctor information and compare prices, they may choose a new medical center and become a regular visitor. In this way, medical centers can cut down on their additional advertising costs.

A white chart arrow on a green and black background

Support and improvements

Along with our client, we believe that this project will become an indispensable tool for medical centers and their patients. These days, we continue to develop the platform and work on improving it. Next, we plan to:

  • Expand the platform’s services to other cities and countries

  • Continue integrations with other medical centers’ software

  • Implement marketplace analytics

  • Add a filter for clinics and services according to the patient's insurance and simplify the work with insurance companies for both medical centers and their clients

  • Introduce new types of discount

  • Offer certificates for medical services

  • Make it possible to hold online consultations on the platform

A hand dropping a coin into a money box on a blue background

Project features

  • A blue icon of an arrow and a phone
    24/7 registration and authorization of patients with mobile phone number
  • A blue icon of a bell
    Convenient notification tools: via SMS and email newsletters
  • A blue icon of a thumb-up
    Simple yet appealing UI making it easy for both clinics and their patients to use the platform
  • A blue icon of a slider
    The ability to adjust the availability of the medical center depending on the season or opening hours
  • A blue icon of a dollar
    The ability to compare the price for a particular service in different medical centers
  • A blue icon of two people
    The ability to create a family profile and make bookings for any family member
  • A blue icon of a credit card
    The ability to attach a credit card only once and use it to pay for visits to all clinics on Doctime
  • A blue icon of a lightning bolt
    Fast online booking, change and cancellation without any phone calls