Development of an Online System to Access the Availability of Beds and Equipments in the Referral Centers for the Transport of Newborn Patients

ABSTRACT

PURPOSE: An online system concerning bed and equipment availability in the referral centers was developed to prevent any delay in the transport of newborn infants to a referral center with adequate equipments. METHODS: A program using web user interface was developed by Developer 2000 and Oracle database under UNIX system. The availability of equipments in the NICU, patient's medical information, user's information were included. The program was tested on the server of the Yeungnam University Medical Center with personal computers as clients. RESULTS: The program consisted of six menus bed and equipment availability, updating the data, contact numbers, patients' informations, users informations, others. After login, availability of beds and equipments were shown according to the selected area which was chosen by the user. Phone numbers of physicians at the referral center appear on a window newly opened by clicking on the hospital name where newborn patient will be transferred. Medical information about patients can be transmitted to the referral center. The data can be updated by the webmaster of the individual hospital, and new hospital, delivery mode, treatment modality can be added by the system operator. It took 5.1+/-0.7 seconds from connection to execution of the program when it was connected through local area network in the medical center, and 10.2+/-0.2 seconds after 15+/-0.9 seconds' connection time if it was connected by 56K dial-up modem. Conclusion: This program will be very useful if connection time were shortened, and shortage of the neonatal intensive care beds nationwide were resolved.