Implementation of a Hospital Appointment Scheduling System for University of Benin Teaching Hospital

Long waiting times and disorganised appointment management are chronic problems at the University of Benin Teaching Hospital (UBTH), Edo State, South South Nigeria. This project implements a hospital appointment scheduling system for UBTH, enabling patients to book, reschedule, and cancel outpatient appointments through a web and mobile interface. The system was developed using Laravel PHP for the backend, Vue.js for the web frontend, and a companion Flutter mobile app, with MySQL as the data store. The design and development follow the spiral model, incorporating risk assessment relevant to healthcare data sensitivity. Key features include specialty-based appointment booking, doctor schedule management, reminder notifications via SMS and email, walk-in queue integration, and administrative reporting dashboards. A 12-week evaluation involved 200 outpatients and 30 clinical staff across four UBTH departments. Results show that average patient wait time for booked appointments decreased from 87 minutes to 23 minutes, and 88 percent of clinical staff reported improved schedule visibility. The study recommends integration with UBTH's Hospital Management Information System (HMIS) to unify patient data and streamline clinical workflows. This research provides a practical software engineering contribution to improving tertiary healthcare delivery in Nigeria's South South zone. Keywords: appointment scheduling, teaching hospital, UBTH, healthcare software, South South Nigeria