Reengineering Dental Hospital Information System Workflow Process: A case of the Obafemi Awolowo University Teaching Hospital Dental Clinic

Abstract

The existing workflow process that dental patients undergo in hospitals is riddled with repetitive steps. This has led to delays in dental service delivery. Thus, there is a dire need for a workflow process that will eliminate repeated procedures and reduce the waiting time of service delivery. This paper seeks to reengineer the workflow problem in a dental hospital with a view to reducing the problems encountered by dental patients. The time taken for each workflow process was obtained from the staff and patients in Obafemi Awolowo University Teaching Hospital Complex Dental Clinic through interviews and observation. The existing and proposed workflow process models were represented using Petri net as workflow net and designed using Unified Modelling Language (UML) tools. The models were simulated in MATLAB environment using Simulink. The performance of the proposed model was evaluated by benchmarking it with the existing model using patient throughput and waiting time as performance metrics. The result showed that the proposed model outperformed the existing model significantly by a reduction in patient waiting time by 36.8% as a result of the reduction in the number of processes from 14 to 8 processes, thereby leading to higher patient throughput of 0.2 patients/sec. It was concluded that the proposed model can be adopted by the Hospital management for more effective and efficient healthcare service delivery.

Suggested citation

T. Olodude , B. Akinyemi , G. Aderounmu (2024). Reengineering Dental Hospital Information System Workflow Process: A case of the Obafemi Awolowo University Teaching Hospital Dental Clinic Koozakar Proceedings, 1(1). https://doi.org/10.69798/13272922

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