e-hAC: Interactive Health Access Card Dispenser Kiosk to aid Outpatient Queuing in Jose Reyes Memorial Medical Center

Various transactions involving utilization of health access cards have been evolving continuously in different countries. Most of these are products of advancement and integration of smart technology to provide patients with more convenient and accessible healthcare. In the Philippines, public healthcare system facilities and services are not as impressive as those from other countries. They provide health cards but manual process in providing services is one of the problems that is time-consuming and troublesome for patients. To cater this problem, this study aims to design and develop an interactive dispenser kiosk system that can speed up the process of providing health access cards, give access to history of visits and create a queuing system for patients using RFID technology. The kiosk’s functionality was analyzed based on the card displacement from dispenser, data retrieval’s accuracy from database, average transaction time of the processes, and satisfactory rating of respondents. Test shows that the use of servo motor with 5.5 kilograms per centimeter applied torque has been proven to be more efficient in achieving the minimum card displacement of 5.8 centimeters than push-pull solenoid. Experiments attained 100% accuracy in detecting multiple accounts and retrieving registered user accounts from the database. E-hAC obtained the minimum average transaction time of 3 minutes for dispensing health access cards while 2 minutes in data retrieval with queuing number. Ultimately, the satisfactory rating of respondents proved that e-hAC can speed up the process of providing health access cards and queuing system in Jose Reyes Memorial Medical Center.