Virtual Clinic

Abstract

The advent of the Internet has sparked a rapid increase in the electronification of all routine activities including life critical services such as diagnosis of diseases. The term “virtual clinic”, which means a clinic having no physical existence yet providing all the facilities which are available in any real clinic, has captured the imagination of medical entrepreneurs and investors. The idea is to provide medical treatment to people without having them ever set foot in a hospital. Due to its great utility the notion of a virtual clinic has gained immense popularity amongst doctors and patients worldwide. The true value of such systems is evident in remote areas where physical medical services are scarcely available if at all. People in those areas have to travel long distances in order to get adequate treatment and a delay in the provision of the same may prove fatal. A virtual clinic will enable access to instant expert medical advice in any part of the world from any other part. Our objective is to realize this idea in the form of a generic application which can be deployed in any hospital. The features provided by our virtual clinic include online registration of patients and doctors and online diagnosis and prescriptions. The system will also maintain the medical history of every patient ever entering the virtual clinic in order to enable more accurate and detailed analysis by the physicians. A front desk doctor can record basic symptoms such as temperature, blood pressure etc., and refer the case to a specialist, if required, for instant advice.