Appointment Management Framework

Inspiration

In the post Covid-19 world, customers and organisations would surely want to go contact-less. To make any appointment and then go through the process, we need to come in contact with a lot of people and interact with them both physically and over phone. The entire journey of setting up and going through any meeting/appointment requires a lot of human controlled steps and uncertainty. But, we as a team thought, why don't make the process seamless, intelligent, guided and contact-less at the same time only through one single app. Doesn't that sound wow ? Yes, our Appointment Management Framework caters to this issue and addresses the problem of multiple human contacts and delays in going through any process like Doctor's appointment, Airport Checkin and Boarding, Restaurant Table Booking, any Office Appointment, Medical Test Appointment, visiting your Auto-Mobile dealer etc.

What it does

We have built a Framework application that helps in a guided appointment execution process for any individual. This generic framework contains generic and reusable rules which can be extended easily to any industry for the guided appointment process. Also, any organisation can extend its existing end-user-facing Pega application to include this framework e.g. any Bank can include this feature in its existing app and provide a seamless experience to its customers each time they decide to visit the Bank branch. The salient features of this framework are -

Book a new appointment easily through Web/mobile channels . Show available time slots while booking.
get reminders on the day of the appointment,
automatic notification in case of possible delay to adjust the plan accordingly for both customer and service personnel,
once reaching the destination, customer can enter the premises by scanning the QR code that is generated in the mobile app ensuring contact-less entrance to the premise,
customer gets follow up notification/instructions for next steps through the mobile app
automatically gets assigned a pre-allocated seat ensuring social-distancing and no queue/waiting
flexibility for the service personnel to start the meeting and notify the waiting customer
adding value to the discussion by providing Pega enabled AI input based on customer data and previous interactions
gets guided in the entire process so that the experience is entirely friction less.

As a sample implementation layer, we have built "U+ Hospital OPD Management" app in which the user goes through a similar seamless experience as explained above for a doctor's appointment process. The app is also AI powered - it provides diagnostic test recommendations based on a customer's past records like whether he/she has been in contact with a covid patient, age, sex, past medicine usage and tests taken etc.. The application can be used by both patient and doctor. Patients can book/reschedule/cancel the appointment through mobile app using the 24x7 chat bot or manual registration in web channel and then go through the entire process guided by that app. The doctor through his/her web portal can see the list of upcoming patients for the day, authenticate the patient, write & upload the prescription and complete each case. The patient in turn gets the notification in his/her app, gets notified regarding medicine buying and undergoing further diagnostic test options if any and then a guided exit. This way our application is ensuring a smooth, contactless, hassle-free journey for both the patient as well as the doctor involved in the appointment process. Both web and mobile versions of the application have been built.

How we built it

The Appointment Management Framework has been built in Pega 8.3 version. First the framework layer has been built where we have given all the case types/stages of a generic appointment booking like registration, guided entry, guided execution and exit. Then the same has been inherited in the implementation layer where we have built it specifically for the "U+ Hospital OPD Management" showcasing the contact-less journey of a patient and doctor in the appointment and execution process. Pega Mobile client was used to build the mobile app for helping the patient throughout the journey. Pega Chatbot has been utilized to help the customer with any help 24x7 like like booking registration, checking doctor availability etc.

Challenges we ran into

Getting the Pega Mobile Client up and running in 2-3 days was a real challenge
Making the QR Code scan work was another tough thing we faced

Accomplishments that we're proud of

The Patient can do the entire appointment booking process through the Chat Bot itself through constant guidance.
In case there is a delay in the process due to previous patients in the appointment list and hence the patient should start 30 mins late for the OPD compared to the previous scheduled time, the same is informed to the customer real time through push notification in our application. This helps the patient adjust his/her start time and in the process saves time and avoids churn or frustration in waiting time.
Adding intelligence to the discussion process by using Pega AI adaptive model suggestions.

Value proposition of the application -

Helps to meet "new normal" expectations in post-covid era
Opex savings by reducing human intervention in the entire process
Customer satisfaction by ensuring hassle-free and automatic process
Preventing customer churn by minimizing delay, removing queue/waiting time and adding AI enabled intelligence

What we learned

Using the application of QR Code scanning and progressing with the case automatically.
Using AI in Pega to offer propositions based on customer's data or past behavior.

What's next for Appointment Management Framework

We can strengthen the AI strategy and make the models more robust by offering discounts on medicines to be bought or tests to be taken. Also we can use customer propensity towards the offers for balancing customer needs and business benefits. We can also add a marketing framework such as Pega marketing to improve the Offer proposition process.
Improvising the web chat bot to display search results based on Pega geo-location
The look and feel of the application can be strengthened to make it more appealing to end users. The responsive UI for the mobile client has scopes of betterment.
The "medication details" is currently hard coded, in future it will be shown automatically based on what the doctor prescribed.