ONline appointment book

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  neil on 14/08/2008 - 11:06

  Google Calendar works for me. Pretty simple and it syncs up nicely with Outlook.
  http://calendar.google.com

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  ltompsonny on 14/08/2008 - 11:19

  Does it have 20 min intervals? Can patients book on it, and then their details not be seen by nayone else?

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  neil on 14/08/2008 - 11:28

  20 minute intervals, Yes. Patients booking themselves,hmmm.. Not sure but would you really want people to have the ability to book in automatically? You would need to implement some way to stop people from booking willy/nilly.

  Perhaps, you can embed a non-editable calendar (Google or whatever) that only you can book in people to and maybe have some kind of form on your website that can submit appointment requests to you. Don't know, just an idea…

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  ltompsonny on 14/08/2008 - 11:39

  I guess I would recognise the patients name etc when they booked in, and could call to verify those that I didn't. I guess the point is that they can book themselves in so it is a convenience thing. Could they do this on google?

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  neil on 14/08/2008 - 12:01

  Yep, you can share your calendar with everyone by making it public or select people by going into sharing options. They would need a google/gmail account to make changes though. Everyone else would be able to see that PatientX would have a booking though. Hmmm..

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  scotty on 14/08/2008 - 12:06

  One TODO web-based app that I have been using is Remember the Milk (which is an Australia-based web startup). It is basically a todo list that you can assign time onto each of the todo items. You also can have folders. One of the folder is inbox, where other RememberTheMilk users can put todo items there.

  So in theory you can have patients "request" the booking by sending you a todo item. You can then mark that slot as busy on your public Google Calendar, and then mark the item as Completed in RememberTheMilk so the sender knows the todo item has been done.

  The work flow is a bit complicated and involves two systems, but at least they are free :)

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  ltompsonny on 14/08/2008 - 13:20

  I have found a couple.
  One is clickbook.net It works pretty well, but has a massive banner at the top which is confusing and also people have to sign up to it, which is inconvenient for them and might put them off. But it is free…..

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  pauly on 14/08/2008 - 22:57

  It really depends on what you're after and your level of experience undiesdownunder.

  Firstly, are you looking for a paid solution that is more customized to your business needs, or are you after a free generic solution? Paid solution is of course the best, as you can get software developers to customize your own content management system for you. But this won't come cheap.

  If you're after a generic solution, how generic you want your software to be? Do you want to maintain a level of privacy, where other users won't be able to see the schedules of other users? Or do you want to enforce registration first before someone is able to book an event?

  Also, do you have any coding experience? If you do, there are several open source scheduling software out there that could do what you want (of course you need to modify a little). e.g.:

  http://www.php.brickhost.com/demo.php — highly customizable

  http://clinicbookingsystem.com/ — specific to your field but there's no front end for users to book or view your booking list (you can easily implement this your own though if you know coding). I suspect this is made by an aussie as the address fields are aussie addresses. See their demo.

  http://sourceforge.net/projects/across/?abmode=1 - unfortunately, no demo available.

  Good luck. :)

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  ClickBook guru on 03/09/2008 - 15:19

  Hi undiesdownunder,

  We're looking at dramatically improving the way ClickBook integrates with your web pages right now, which will include streamlining of the 'banner' so as to remove any confusion.

  Regarding client sign-in, this is important for a number of reasons:

  1. Returning clients do not have to re-enter all their details every time.
  2. Clients would not be able to cancel or change appointments if the system did not have a way of verifying them by password.
  3. ClickBook would not be able to provide you with reliable logs and statistics of client appointment if it could not verify them as above.
  4. Users can set their own preferences for email & SMS reminders for appointments, again only possible if they are verified.

  Finally you must consider that requesting personal details from a user would occur at your practice anyway. our market research has shown that less than 10% of typical clients are afraid of supplying personal details online to make appointments, as of July 2007.

  Hope this helps.

  Mark Demicoli
  ClickBook Development Team
  http://www.ClickBook.net