During initial project discussions, the project team decided that the general practitioner (GP) consultation workflow allows clinical personnel to familiarize themselves with the deployed system as well as allowing the project team to ascertain that the system works as expected while deployed on location. Installation was undertaken during the October 13th – 16th period, which included a Saturday and Sunday, at which times the clinic was not receiving patients. Given that the general practitioner office received patients every day between 09:00 – 15:00, work continued during those times in an unused office space within the clinic, after which the installation process was resumed within room 103. The following steps describe the physical deployment process of the system:
- Before the physical deployment took place, an Internet-facing server was installed at Info World, running a stable build of the HAI-OPS software server. The software server was initially tested in order to ensure it was working correctly. The software server included the functionalities of the advanced system prototype, namely its basic line of defense for monitoring workflow execution.
- A mobile RFID tag reader, together with a locally-running server software were installed at the clinic reception, in order to facilitate the patient registration workflow. The local server was required to interface between the RFID card values read via the reader and the HAI-OPS web client running in a web browser session.
- The connected devices were installed within room 103 of the clinic, during the time the clinic was closed for patients (Saturday and Sunday). Care was taken to ensure that device placement does not impede the clinical process and that equipment is installed as unobtrusively as possible.
- Initial testing was undertaken before the clinic was opened for patients on Monday morning. This included adjusting RFID antenna placement, transmission power, adjusting placement of water tap sensor as well as ensuring that hardware-software communication was correct.
- Software settings were updated within the clinic’s Ethernet network to make sure connected devices could be reached and programmed remotely. The same was done to the clinic reception, to ensure that registration software could be updated, if required.
- Effective system testing started on Tuesday, October 16th , during which time the first patients’ actions were monitored by the system. We must note that patients cannot be identified using the data obtained by the HAI-OPS system, as the system uses a card ID for identification of returning patients.Card ID to actual patient matching can only take place using the ESK software system, which matches this data.
These steps constituted the physical deployment of the advanced pilot prototype. The following steps were all undertaken remotely, using the remote access programmed into the connected devices in order to tweak
hardware-related settings, or accessing the IW software server directly, in order to roll out new and improved features.