Trial run of a patient call system using mobile devices

Abstract

The indefinite amount of waiting time in hospitals is a cause of stress and anxiety in outpatients. We developed a patient call system to alleviate the stress the outpatients undergo when waiting to be called for their examinations. After registering the patients at the reception desk, the patient call system will notify the outpatient prior to their examination by a sound played on their smartphones. To evaluate the effectiveness of our proposed method, we recruited outpatients during their regular visits at a national university hospital. 1015 outpatients used our system over a period of 4 months, starting from the commencement of the trial run period. The mean age of the patients was 48 (SD ± 18.0) years. The results of a 5-point scale web survey taken by these patients showed that 361 out of the 422 respondents (86%) rated the system 4 or above (1: bad—5: extremely good), thereby verifying the effectiveness of our proposed system in alleviating the anxiety of the outpatients. The patient call system is therefore expected to be an effective solution for medical institutions to address the problem of long outpatient waiting times.