Indian Journal of Science and Technology, Vol 10(23), DOI: 10.17485/ijst/2017/v10i23/109605, June 2017
ISSN (Print) : 0974-6846 ISSN (Online) : 0974-5645
Creating a Mobile Application based on a Model to Easily Locate Pharmacies in Urban Areas Liliana Enciso-Quispe1*, Elmer Zelaya2 and Pablo Alejandro Quezada-Sarmiento3 Departamento de Ciencias de la Computacion, Universidad Tecnica Particular de Loja, San Cayetano Alto S/N, CP: 1101608, Ecuador;
[email protected] 2 Escuela de Ciencias de la Computacion, Informatica, Universidad Tecnica Particular de Loja, San Cayetano Alto S/N, CP: 1101608, Ecuador;
[email protected] 3 Grupo de Innovacion Tecnologica Educativa INNOEDUCA, Universidad Tecnica Particular de Loja, San Cayetano Alto S/N, CP: 1101608, Ecuador;
[email protected] 1
Abstract Objectives: To develop a mobile application for the location of open pharmacies, in order to geolocalize and provide a fast and timely service in accordance with the politics in health of Ecuador. Methods/Statistical Analysis: Our proposal is to design a geolocation model for pharmacies in urban areas and test it with a prototype application that combines different technologies, such as HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, and the Google Maps API. Findings: The proposed mobile web provides a 24/7 service for virtually any device with pre-installed GPS capacity. The application itself will help to impact the environment and to estimate the benefits according to their functionality and accessibility. Applications/Improvement: The resulting prototype includes interactivity features and automatic updates that other applications of similar characteristics, do not offer yet. Finally, it is important to mention that during the development of this model, various aspects related to the potential users and the architecture of the service was considered as well. Only to mention some: the type of mobile device that is being used, the operating system of the device, and the different software architectures available.
Keywords: Health Care Services, Mobile Networks, SOA, Software Development
1. Introduction In the world of today, not able to find a pharmacy in the shortest time and at the exact moment of needing a medicine can be considered a serious problem. In this regard, ongoing projects at different levels exist1,2, however, they still do not represent an ideal solution since both user access and interaction remain arguably complex in developing economies and an excessive amount of resources is demanded when database queries are executed. This last fact is stressed if the non-sementation of activities and the lack of broadband are also considered. Moreover, other efforts3 do not contain strong arguments to establish the necessary control on pharmacies availability since they only focus on providing static data, e.g. address, but they do not allow dynamic locational *Author for correspondence
access nor they clarify the working hours of the establishments in service. In the case of Ecuador, and specifically for Loja, issues may go even further than the technical barriers previously mentioned. For example, there is no application to display the location of pharmacies on duty; there is simply access to a web page4 that shows a reduced number of pharmacies and in a non-coordinated manner. These pharmacies are usually large brands, such as Fybeca, and they are not evenly distributed along the city. In this context, the underlying assumption of this paper is that allowing immediate access to information from pharmacies on duty and offering this information as a service, through a mobile application (app), could have a significant impact on efficiency. The importance of pharmacies lies in how indispensable it is to acquire basic or pre-
