DEVELOPMENT OF AN ONLINE MEDICAL APPOINTMENT BOOKING WEBSITE

Abstract

Traditional medical appointment booking in Vietnam faces significant challenges including long waiting times, lack of transparency in doctor availability, patient difficulty in identifying appropriate medical specialties, and inefficient manual scheduling processes that lead to booking conflicts and administrative overhead. This thesis presents the Development of an Online Medical Appointment Booking Website that digitizes and streamlines the patient journey from symptom consultation to appointment confirmation. The system employs a Client-Server architecture with VueJS 3 for the responsive frontend and Node.js with Express.js for the RESTful API backend. MySQL ensures ACID-compliant data management for appointments and medical records, while JWT-based authentication with Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) establishes secure permissions for patients, doctors, and administrators. The platform features an AI-powered consultation system using Groq’s Llama 3.1 model with Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) architecture for intelligent specialty recommendations. Supporting services include advanced fuzzy matching for Vietnamese medical terminology variations, a cross-mapping knowledge service connecting symptoms to medical specialties across a comprehensive medical database, and a location-based recommendation system using the Haversine formula for geographic proximity calculations. The development followed an iterative methodology including requirement analysis, entity-relationship database design, RESTful API implementation across multiple modules (authentication, doctors, hospitals, appointments, AI consultation, search, feedback, and notifications), AI service integration with intelligent fallback mechanisms, and comprehensive functional testing. The implemented system successfully eliminates scheduling conflicts through real-time availability checking, provides 24/7 AI-powered preliminary medical consultation, enables intelligent doctor and hospital recommendations based on symptoms and location, and delivers a responsive user interface accessible across desktop and mobile devices, demonstrating practical viability for modernizing healthcare appointment operations in Vietnam.