Dental Marketplace Appointment Scheduling Integration with PMS

• Project: Medical appointment scheduling for a dental platform and its integration with different PMSs
• Duration: 6 months
• Technologies: Node.js, MySQL, C#, PMS – Eagle Soft, Dentrix, Open Dental
• Target audience: Patients, dental providers

Smylen is an online dental marketplace with transparent pricing, appointment scheduling, payments, and more. This booking platform enables patients to set the desired fee, matches them with a fitting doctor, and instantly schedules an appointment.

Challenges

The decision to engage Velvetech was driven by the need for control of the service and the market opportunity in real-time automated booking.

When Smylen reached Velvetech, the major pain point we discussed was the lack of data connectivity. Smylen platform was unable to communicate with dental providers, and that caused scheduling conflicts and required manual data inputs.

At that time, the Client used a popular SaaS product for managing doctor’s schedules and appointments. Unfortunately, it lacked performance and extensibility and did not have all the desired functionality.

First of all, it did not support real-time data synchronization to display actual appointment schedules and offer available time slots. The situation led to many drawbacks and excessive work.

On the flip side, the appointments arranged in the Client’s platform did not appear in the software of dental providers. They only received email notifications upon the booking and had to manually enter the details about the appointment.

When it comes to the medical field, various healthcare organizations deal with their day-to-day administrative tasks in a Practice Management Software (PMS). To address the Client’s need for data connectivity, we had to integrate the Smylen platform with multiple PMSs.

Learn more about The Essentials of Practice Management Software

For Velvetech, it was an opportunity to welcome and come up with a solution addressing the Client’s issues.

Process

Focusing on a flawless scheduling process, it was important to enable effective management of schedules and appointments on Smylen’s side prior integration of the systems. Thus, it was the first step to take in the project scope of work.

Refined Medical Appointment Scheduling

Proceeding with one of the Client’s requests, Velvetech pulled out all the stops to develop a medical appointment scheduling solution that would replace the third-party web-service. This service allowed the Client to manage the schedules and appointments, but its performance left room for improvement.

The start of the project was the right moment to offer a new solution as the next step implied its integration with other systems. Using Node.js, our team swiftly built a high-speed microservice coupled with custom API that stood as a more powerful alternative to external proprietary web-service.

This new service proved to deliver great efficiency during interactions with a Smylen platform and dental providers. With a robust tool at hand, Smylen also achieved another goal – cost reduction – as their private internal solution was not tied to any charges.

Smooth Integration with PMS

The next step to address the Client’s needs was integration with Practice Management Software. System integration is crucial for seamless data connectivity, smooth internal workflows, and error elimination – exactly what Smylen had been struggling with.

The integration helps achieve such benefits as:

• Real-time visibility
• Process efficiency
• Valuable data collection
• Cost savings

To enable the connection of the Smylen platform and some top PMSs, Velvetech used a third-party sync agent. However, we had to slightly adjust it in the first place. With its extended capabilities, the integration process ran smoothly.

After Velvetech integrated Smylen with PMSs, they could successfully exchange data and synchronize. Now, dentists can see all the appointments from Smylen in their PMSs. Vice versa, the system displays valid time slots for patients and provides the correct schedule and appointment data of dental providers.

As a result, the Client could support the most commonly used PMS – Eagle Soft, Dentrix, and Open Dental.

Additional Functionality

To top it all, we expanded the existing platform’s functionality by adding a new feature. Now patients can indicate the desired appointment time slot when doing a search. For example, if the patient points 11 am, the platform suggests all doctors available at this time following fee and location criteria.

Outcome

Velvetech provided the Client with a revamped and seamlessly integrated platform. All implemented enhancements facilitated interactions with dental providers and allowed Smylen to offer patients effortless and flawless service.

As a result of the medical platform integration with PMSs, Smylen shows actual data and time slots depending on the doctors’ availability.

Medical appointment scheduling became painless for everyone, including healthcare providers, as it has eliminated manual data input and error risks. Thus, patients and dentists stay up-to-date with schedule details and changes if any to be made.

Additionally, appointment scheduling software developed for Smylen has replaced the SaaS solution, increased efficiency, and reduced the chances of failure to zero. On top of that, the renovated system has empowered Smylen to enhance customer experience and provided the ground for service excellence.

What’s Next

Velvetech and Smylen actively collaborated on the process of creating a seamless solution that revealed many opportunities for our future partnership. One of the top priorities for today is to expand the platform capabilities by implementing new functionality.

Currently, we are working on new payment initiatives that will help Smylen attract more patients to use their platform and enhance customer experience.