Shubhangi Bokade

QueueCure: Real-Time Smart Queue Management for Clinics

Small and medium-sized clinics often rely on manual token systems where patients have little visibility into their queue position or expected waiting time. Patients repeatedly approach the reception desk to ask, "How much longer will it take?", creating interruptions for staff and increasing anxiety in waiting rooms. Receptionists simultaneously manage patient registration, queue updates, and doctor coordination, making it difficult to provide accurate wait-time estimates. Existing solutions are often expensive, require specialized hardware, or do not provide real-time u Process I began by mapping the end-to-end clinic queue journey from patient registration to consultation completion. The primary goal was to identify moments where uncertainty, delays, and communication breakdowns occurred. I analyzed the needs of two distinct user groups: receptionists, who require quick queue management tools, and patients, who need clear visibility into their waiting status. This led to the decision to build separate interfaces for each user while maintaining a shared source of truth for queue data. Several queue-management approaches were evaluated. Polling-based updates were initially considered but were discarded because they would generate unnecessary network requests and introduce delays. Instead, I adopted an event-driven architecture using real-time so Results Reduced queue-status checking from 6 taps to 2 taps. Achieved 91% task success rate in usability testing. Enabled real-time queue synchronization between receptionist and patient views. Ranked #1 among 14 project submissions. Improved transparency of wait times and reduced repetitive inquiries at reception. Reflection Use historical consultation data for more accurate wait-time predictions. Conduct testing across multiple clinics and larger user groups. Add SMS/WhatsApp notifications when a patient's turn is approaching. Improve accessibility with multilingual support and larger text options. Introduce an analytics dashboard for clinic performance and patient flow insights.