Microsoft Word - 22-3527_s_ETASR_V10_N3_pp5706-5712


Engineering, Technology & Applied Science Research Vol. 10, No. 3, 2020, 5706-5712 5706 
 

www.etasr.com Lam et al.: Mobile-based Hospital Bed Management with Near Field Communication Technology 

 

Mobile-based Hospital Bed Management with Near 

Field Communication Technology  
A Case Study 

 

Meng Chun Lam 

Center for Artificial Intelligence Technology (CAIT) 

Faculty of Information Science and Technology 

Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia 
Bangi Selangor, Malaysia 

lammc@ukm.edu.my 

Masri Ayob 

Center for Artificial Intelligence Technology (CAIT) 

Faculty of Information Science and Technology 

Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia 
Bangi Selangor, Malaysia 

masri@ukm.edu.my 

Jun Yang Lee 

iFAST Fintech Solutions 

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia 

junyang0822@gmail.com 

Norizal Abdullah 

Center for Artificial Intelligence Technology (CAIT) 

Faculty of Information Science and Technology 

Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia 
Bangi Selangor, Malaysia 

norizal.abdullah23@gmail.com 

Faizal Amri Hamzah 

Department of Emergency Medicine 

Hospital Canselor Tuanku Muhriz 

UKM Medical Center 
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia 

vit_ron@yahoo.com 

Siti Sarah Mohd Zahir 

Department of Emergency Medicine 

Hospital Canselor Tuanku Muhriz  

UKM Medical Center 
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia 

sarahirissa821@gmail.com 
 

 

Abstract—Bed management is one of the most crucial tasks in a 
hospital. A desktop-based (PC) information technology system 

has been widely adopted to assist this operation. The fixed 

location and the limited amount of available PCs shared among 

staff for different routine tasks can cause delays in bed 

information updating and therefore delays to the bed 

management processes. With the penetration of smartphones, a 
mobile-based application becomes a reliable alternative solution 

for bed management to complement the existing system. 

Smartphones offer a few benefits, especially mobility because 

users can update the information from any place and at any time. 

Our aim was to study the applicability of a mobile-based 

application for assisting bed management operation. The 

application consisted of ward-based bed information 
visualization, bed information updating, and ward information 

updating modules. Observation and interviews with expert users 

were performed to outline the required functions of the 

application. On a Likert 1-5 scale, the mobile application 

achieved a mean score of 3.45 for usefulness, 3.40 for ease of use, 

and 3.42 for satisfaction. Meanwhile, the respondents were also 
concerned about the mobile data consumption of the app, which 

took up 45.8% of the negative feedback. On the positive side, the 

respondents agree that the mobile application helps them in the 
bed management operation. 

Keywords-bed management; mobile application; usability study; 
hospital management 

I. INTRODUCTION  

The increase of human population density put pressure on 
hospitals in providing adequate services to accommodate 
patients. One of the most important facilities in a hospital is the 
number of available hospital beds. Limited or problematic bed 
capacity can cause overcrowded situations in outpatient 
departments due to the prolonged waiting time of bed 
assignment to patients. The shortage of beds or inefficient bed 
management in hospitals is a common problem. Some of the 
common factors that cause bed shortage or delays in the 
process of patient discharge are: family members being unable 
to accompany patients home upon discharge, patients waiting 
for family members to collect their medications and 
documents, and delays of information in the communication to 
the bed manager on the status of beds [1]. To overcome this 
issue, Hospital Canselor Tuanku Muhriz (HCTM) improved 
the patient discharge process by introducing a discharge 
lounge. The patient who is in good condition is directed to the 
discharge lounge with the approval of a doctor. Patients are 
waiting comfortably to be taken by their family members 
within the lounge facilities. Hence, the bed in the ward will be 

Corresponding author: Meng Chun Lam



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available for new patients. Unfortunately, the process of 
updating the bed utilization status is often delayed due to the 
limited availability of personal computers (PCs) for the staff. 
The existing bed management system in HCTM is a web-based 
system. The system is integrated with other common operations 
or modules including patient registration, admission, discharge, 
bills, medication, etc. The staff has to access the system via a 
PC, the fixed location and amount of available PCs limits the 
staff’s accessibility. Hence, the staff members often need to 
queue for using the shared PCs which are utilized for various 
routine tasks. Also, all the modules are web-based, and the user 
interface of the system is not designed for mobile view. 
Therefore, it is not a mobile-friendly system because the user 
interface does not show and align probably in a smartphone. A 
potential solution is to enhance the bed management system to 
maximize resource utilization and avoid hospital overload. A 
bed management information system can be helpful [2]. It 
allows bed managers to make easier, faster, and more accurate 
decisions. 

The number of smartphone users is growing rapidly. With 
the advent of smartphone and Internet technology, smartphone-
based applications have been applied to areas such as banking 
[3], environmental monitoring [4], and healthcare services [5]. 
Near Field Communication (NFC) is a wireless sensor 
technology available in a smartphone, using contactless short-
range communication devices. It consists of two main 
components: a tag that contains information and a reader-writer 
that is able to extract and put information from and to the tag 
[6]. NFC is a set of standards for smartphones and similar 
devices for creating radio communication when brought in 
proximity, normally no more than a few centimeters [7]. NFC 
is available on a smartphone where the reader is placed into the 
phone’s shell. The bed information can be embedded in the 
NFC tag and thus it allows instant information access when the 
equipped smartphone is in its proximity. This paper aims to 
identify the applicability of a smartphone-based mobile 
application with NFC technology to facilitate the bed 
management process at the HCTM. The developed Bed 
Management Mobile Application (BMMA) is a high-fidelity 
prototype that allows a non-technical person like a nurse or a 
doctor to instantly see the flow, user interface, and test the bed 
management mobile application. Thus, users can judge how 
well it meets their expectations and facilitates their work. The 
contribution of this research is the BMMA using the NFC 
approach and its evaluation.  

II. BACKGROUND 

Hospital bed availability is an important asset, especially 
for Intensive Care Units (ICUs), Coronary Care Units (CCUs) 
or emergency departments. It is an essential hospital job to 
coordinate the allocation of patients over the unoccupied 
hospital beds [8]. 

A. Mobile Application in Health Care 

Utilizing mobile applications for hospital management 
including the research to study the level of acceptance of 
mobile health applications [9] is an open research subject with 
many areas of interest [9-14]. Even though the smartphone is a 
popular device, capable of performing technology-based tasks, 

its use might not be welcome in a hospital. Authors in [9] 
confirmed that a mobile health application is generally 
accepted by the public to be integrated with the existing system 
of a hospital. Their study suggested eight factors that need to be 
considered when implementing mobile applications which 
were Hedonic Motivation, Performance, Expectancy, Social 
Influence, Effort Expectancy, Price Value, Habit, Facilitating 
Conditions, and Behavior. To increase the effective and 
efficient care of the hospital, authors in [10] proposed a Bring-
Your-Own-Device (BYOD) concept to allow hospital staff to 
use their own devices to access the hospital system. The BYOD 
guideline included role-based access control, apps to work on 
internal or virtual private networks, it required apps to use a 
minimal cache, and enforced automatic logoff to prevent data 
leakage. An example of a developed mobile application 
included mPHASiS [11]. It has been developed and utilized to 
monitor the vital signs of patients based on several sensors. It 
can notify medical personnel in case of emergencies, hence 
manually and frequently checking on the patient can be 
reduced. Authors in [12] designed a smartphone program-based 
system to help doctors to track Alzheimer's disease patients’ 
condition. The application alerts the patient when to consume 
medicine based on the schedule provided by the doctor. A 
mobile application for diabetes patients [13] can be seen as a 
personal health care system. It is a tool to record daily test 
results and track long term health condition changes. Authors 
in [14] concentrated on mobile application design to deliver an 
efficient health care system. By using this app, users can find 
in-city hospital information, cabin data, make cabin booking 
payments, accept smart tips on selecting the right hospital, 
locate a physician, call for emergency services, receive 
information on first aid and notifications from the drug alarm 
system, calculate their Body Mass Index (BMI), receive 
information on health care, data about support and drugs, 
prescription reminders, etc. 

Such mobile applications will be an essential part of the 
next generation of ubiquitous and pervasive healthcare systems. 
This study aims to have an initial exploration of the feasibility 
of applying a smartphone-based mobile application for 
managing beds at HCTM. 

B. Current Situation 

HCTM, previously known as Pusat Perubatan Universiti 
Kebangsaan Malaysia, is a hospital merged with the Hospital 
of Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia and the Faculty of 
Medicine, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. In order to 
understand the situation and the operations of the Hospital, a 
series of interviews and discussions with different members of 
the staff including nurses, doctors, and information technology 
officers were conducted. There are many clinical systems that 
have been designed for the HCTM to ensure a smooth 
procedure flow for the hospital operations. One of the known 
modules is the bed management system. It is used to view and 
update the status of beds in wards. The system allows the 
hospital staff to view the availability of a bed in a ward and 
handle the admission and the discharge process of a patient. 
After a few discussions and meetings with the information 
technology officer and the end-users (nurses), it was realized 
that the running functions fulfilled the requirements of the daily 



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bed management operation. However, no work has been done 
in the form of a smartphone-based mobile application in any 
module of the existing HCTM system. In HCTM, a bed 
manager from each ward is responsible to update the 
information/status of bed availability. The PC in the ward is the 
main terminal for accessing the bed management system. It is 
shared with the other staff members. Sometimes, the bed 
manager was forced to wait the other users to complete their 
tasks on the PC. Hence, a physical logbook still exists to keep 
track of the record and the information from there is put in the 
system later, when the PC is not occupied. The ward receives a 
bed booking start with the requests from the clinic or the 
emergency department. The bed manager at the ward should 
record or start the reservation using the existing desktop-based 
bed managing system. In this step, the bed manager is required 
to select and record the patient information and other relevant 
information such as the doctor in charge, diet preferences, etc. 
in the system. However, the manager is often unable to do it on 
the spot in the desktop-based system because the PC in the 
ward might not be available. Hence, managers are forced to 
record the information in the logbook and put the information 
in the system later. The manual recording is causing the 
information to be not transparent and delayed. In other words, 
the system does not show the real and updated information in a 
real situation, which could cause problems, e.g. it might 
confuse the nurses at the clinic and the emergency department 
on the bed availability in a ward. The system could show that 
there are beds available, when there are not. Therefore, nurses 
have to keep calling the ward to get the latest bed information. 
In addition, after the patient arrives in the ward, the bed 
manager should update the status of the bed from reserved to 
occupied. The bed managers are also nurses that have the 

responsibility to take care of the patients once they arrive in the 
ward. They will accompany and settle down a patient at the bed 
before they update bed information. Once the patient is in the 
good condition and ready to discharge, the in-charge doctor 
would write the discharge summary and the nurse will make 
the bed available in the system. 

All the process should be done through the system because 
the captured information will be used for decision making. The 
consequences of delayed and inaccurate information can be a 
crowded Emergency Department (ED) with patients waiting for 
a bed in the ward, delays in the clinical process for patients, 
miscommunication between different departments/wards and 
wrong decision making from the management team. HCTM 
has been looking for a way to reduce the bed turnaround time. 
One of the solutions that they have looked into was improving 
the patient bed management workflow. In this research, focus 
is given on the exploration of using a mobile application to 
assist the bed management process.  

C. Existing Bed Management System 

Three existing bed management systems [16-18] were 
analyzed and compared with the developed and proposed Bed 
Management Mobile Application (BMMA). Table I provides a 
comparison of system features and functions between the 
previous systems and the proposed mobile application. Most of 
the existing systems are desktop-based. Some system interfaces 
are simple and neat. However, they are not following the 
current design trend, while the developed BMMA follows the 
Material Design [15] which is a mobile design principle that 
provides smooth interaction with the mobile application. The 
advantages and limitations in the comparison served as 
guidelines to develop the BMMA.  

TABLE I.  COMPARISON OF THE PROPOSED APP AND PREVIO US SYSTEMS 

Features/Functions 
Wise Bed Manager 

[16] 

BedWatch®Bed Control 

System [17] 

Blueberry In-Patient 

Management System [18] 
Developed BMMA 

Display bed information Main function Main function Sub-function Main function 

Color-code bed allocation ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ 
Summarize ward’s bed 

information 
✓ X ✓ ✓ 

Summarize discipline’s bed 

information 
X X X ✓ 

Mobile application X ✓ X ✓ 
User interface Outdated design Simple and neat Outdated design Material Design [15] 

Complexity 
Easy to use with drag 

and drop function 

Easy to use with 

predefined input method 

Time-consuming. Requires a lot of 

information from users 

Easy to use with 

predefined input method 

NFC technology X X X ✓ 
 

1) Wise Bed Manager 

Wise Bed Manager is a web-based system developed by 
Wise Technologies Ltd. The system displays online 
information of beds and patients based on the room number 
through a web browser. Icons or illustration of bed and color 
code were utilized to arrange the user interface element in a 
tidy way. The Wise Bed Manager system is easy to use, and the 
information is straightforward and easy to understand. The 
system also has a drag-and-drop function that makes patient 
access to the ward easier through the system [16]. 

2) The BedWatch® Bed Control System 

BedWatch® Bed Control is a multi-platform bed management 

system. The system can show the current state of a bed via 

devices connected to the Internet such as computers, 

smartphones, and tablets. Through these devices, users can 

view and update information such as the bed status in a ward. It 

helps different types of users as it can engage with a number of 

different parties such as nurses, bed managers, and cleaners. 

The status of the bed can be updated in a short time because the 

person dealing with the bed can make updates with a 

smartphone [17]. 

3) The Blueberry In-Patient Management System 



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The Blueberry In-Patient Management System is a web-
based system developed by Blueberry Consultants Ltd. The 
system includes functions such as bed management, patient 
tracking, and letter issuing. The system is complex and requires 
users to input different types and varying amounts of 
information. It has a simple graphical user interface and 
provides user convenience in accessing the ward, patient, and 
bed information [18]. 

III. METHOD 

A bed management mobile application with NFC 
technology for the HCTM was designed and developed. The 
purpose of the mobile application is to complement the existing 
bed management system in the hospital in order to improve bed 
management efficiency. The main function of the mobile 
application consists of updating and viewing the bed status 
based on discipline and ward. The following subsection 
discusses the details of the bed management mobile 
application, includes the system architecture, entity-
relationship diagram, and the user interface. 

A. System Architecture 

The system architecture is shown in Figure 1 The bed 
management mobile application used a simple two-tier 
architecture in which the application contains the presentation 
and application layer. A server is utilized to store data and 
information such as bed, ward, and staff information. Mobile 
applications are mainly used to present relevant data in a user-
friendly user interface. An internet connection is important in 
enabling the communication between the mobile application 
and the user. Besides that, the NFC tag is available on the wall 
of the bed, so bed managers can easily access the tag and 
update the status of the bed, thus the bed’s updating process is 
speeded up. Users of the system can be managers, doctors, and 
nurses. The nurse can view and update the bed status, while 
doctors and managers can only view the bed status. 

 
Fig. 1.  The architecture of the bed management mobile application 

B. Entity-Relationship Diagram (ERD) 

The ERD is a graph that depicts the logical structure of a 
database. After the entities in the bed management mobile 
application are identified, the diagram is provided to show the 
relationships between the entities. Attributes of the entities are 

also indicated in the diagram. Figure 2 shows the ERD for the 
design of the proposed app. Its entities are: Bed, Ward, Patient, 
Additional Information, NFC, and Staff. The relationship 
between entities can be identified. For example, one patient 
will have one bed and one bed will have one NFC tag in the 
hospital. Also, one ward will have many staff members, much 
additional information, and have many beds. 

 

 
Fig. 2.  The ERD 

C. Bed Management Mobile Application 

The BMMA is built on the Android platform. The main 
functionality includes: 1) the ability to view the status of beds 
based on discipline and ward, 2) the ability to update the status 
of a bed, 3) the ability to obtain the “Pending List” and the 
“Additional Information” of a bed. The pending list function 
allows the nurse to select the current number of patients 
pending to be admitted into the ward. Through the application, 
another user can also view the number of pending lists of the 
ward without the need to call a certain ward for bed availability 
confirmation. The additional information allows the nurse to 
add a short information message to a bed or ward (e.g. “the fan 
is not working”). Figure 3 shows the screenshots of the 
BMMA. With the use of NFC tags, users can scan the tag 
through their smartphone and get the information of the bed 
from the server based on the bed’s ID information stored in the 
tag. 

 

   
(a) (b) (c) 

Fig. 3.  User interface of the BMMA: (a) Landing page, (b) bed 

information based on a specific ward, (c) user interface for bed status update 



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IV. EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN  

The main goal of the experiment is to gather early feedback 
about the developed BMMA for the HCTM. A 5-point Likert 
scale (ranging from 1 for Strongly Disagree to 5 for Strongly 
Agree) with questions about its usefulness, ease of use, and 
satisfaction was used [19]. The ease of use and usefulness are 
the two main factors that affect the user's intention to use new 
technology [20, 21]. Open-end questions about the positive and 
negative aspects of the mobile application were also asked. The 
invited participants were 150 and the assessment was 
conducted on a voluntary basis. At first, the operation of the 
BMMA in checking and updating the status of beds was 
demonstrated. The session continued with 20 minutes of 
exploration of the BMMA among the participants themselves. 
The participants could freely check or update bed status using 
the BMMA during that session. Finally, the participants were 
asked to answer the five-point scaled questionnaire and the 
open-end questions. A follow-up face to face interview section 
was also conducted after a week of usage with three selected 
levels of participants, namely a junior nurse, a senior nurse, and 
a head nurse. 

V. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 

From the 150 participants, 113-136 complete responses 
were received analogous to the different sections of the 
questionnaire. For example, 113 participants answered the 
question regarding their phone operating system, 136 
participants responded to the working experience question and 
127 participants fully answered the TAM question along with 
the satisfaction factor. They all were nurses of different levels 
(executive, junior, senior, and head nurses). As shown in Table 
II, the age of the participant ranged from 23 to 48. In terms of 
working experience, 63% of the participants had more than 10 
years of experience. 82% of the participants were using 
Android phones and Samsung, Oppo, VIVO, and Xiaomi were 
the most preferred brands. The rest of the 18% of the 
participants were iOS users. 

TABLE II.  DEMOGRAPHIC DATA OF PARTICIPANTS 

Items Category 
Number of complete responses 

(n=115-135) n (%) 

Age 

21-30 42 (31) 

31-40 61 (45) 

41-50 32 (24) 

Working 

experience (years) 

1-5 33 (24) 

6-10 18 (13) 

11-15 25 (19) 

16-20 53 (39) 

21-25 6 (5) 

Operating system 
Android 94 (82) 

iOS 21 (18) 

Mobile service 

provider 

Celcom 48 (36) 

UMobile 32 (25) 

Maxis 27 (20) 

Digi 14 (10) 

Others 14 (10) 
 

A. Usability Results 

To measure the level of performance of each factor, a set of 
merits was adapted from [22]. A mean score falling between 

1.0-2.32 is considered poor and requires improvement, 2.33-
3.65 represents the average and requires consideration to make 
improvements, and 3.66-5.0 is considered good. A total of 127 
received questionnaires were considered fully answered. The 
results are shown in Table III. The Cronbach’s alpha value for 
each factor is more than or equal to 0.9 while the suggested 
benchmark is 0.7 [23]. Therefore, all the items used to measure 
the constructs are reliable. The mean for all three factors was 
between 3.40-3.45. The mean score received from the user’s 
evaluation for the usefulness factor was 3.45, for the ease of 
use was 3.40, and for satisfaction it was 3.42. Based on the 
questionnaire result, the developed BMMA lied in the average 
zone and required attention for further improvement.  

B. Subjective Feedback 

The follow-up face to face interview section confirmed the 
average result of the questionnaire. In general, the feedback 
received from the interview section was divided into two parts: 
the app and app requirement perspectives. In terms of the app 
perspective, the users expected the developed BMMA to be 
linked to the existing web system. Hence, the users required 
inputting the information either in the web or in the app 
platform to avoid the repeating process. Other than that, the 
BMMA did not have not a role-based restriction, thus they 
were worried about the possibility the bed status information to 
be updated by unauthorized parties. For example, only the 
responsible nurses in the medical ward should able to update 
the bed status for the medical ward, while the nurses from other 
wards should be able to only view the bed status. Due to the 
above reasons, users thought it of not being user-friendly. In 
terms of the app requirement perspective, the users were 
worried about the internet/data connection when using the 
BMMA in their daily tasks, due to the limited internet coverage 
by the mobile internet service provider or the fact that the 
signal might be not sufficient. Besides that, the phone capacity 
such as storage, battery, processor and the operating system 
were the factors that they were concerned about. Many users 
asked questions about the iOS version. They were also worried 
of the public reception of the fact that they would be using the 
phone while working. This feedback from the interview section 
was supported by the result of the open-end questions. A total 
of 48 feedbacks were received from the open-end question 
related to the negative feedback and the results are shown in 
Table IV. Even though there were a few limitations required to 
be solved, users are looking forward to the complete version of 
BMMA. Considering the positive feedback (Table V), 46.4% 
of participants thought that the mobile application was easy, 
23.2% found usefulness in its flexibility and transparency 
regarding bed information (23.2%) among wards. A mobile 
app system would certainly be helpful in daily tasks of the 
10.7% while 8.9% commented that it would speed up the 
information update and browsing process. 

This research aimed on the exploration and the possibility 
of using a mobile application to assist the bed management 
process in HCTM. A major goal was to find the acceptance of 
the staff in the use of a mobile application in their daily 
operations and the major challenges to implement the mobile 
application operation. A prototype was developed for the proof 
of concept and to get early feedback about utilizing the mobile 



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app system in the HCTM in the near future. Therefore, the 
current version of BMMA in this study provided limited 
functionality: it focused on viewing and updating the bed 
status. Information regarding patient, doctor, meal, and medical 
data was not able to be associated in this version. To make it 
more practical, the BMMA should have all the functions of the 
existing system. Nonetheless, the current developed BMMA 
served well as a tool to allow nurses to imagine the use of 
smartphone-based application in the bed management process.  

TABLE III.  EVALUATION RESULTS  

Construct Mean + SD 
Cronbach's 

alpha 

Usefulness 3.45 ± 0.63 0.94 

U1 
The application helps me to accomplish 

tasks more quickly. 
3.37 ± 0.63 

 

U2 

The application makes the ward 

information exchange in the discipline 

ward convenient. 

3.55 ± 0.57 
 

U3 The application saves time. 3.44 ± 0.68 
 

U4 
The application helps me to do my job 

more easily. 
3.41 ± 0.67 

 

U5 The application meets my job needs. 3.41 ± 0.65 
 

U6 The application is useful in my job. 3.50 ± 0.59 
 

Ease of use 3.40 ± 0.58 0.90 

EU1 
I can use the application easily without 

written instructions (manual). 
3.39 ± 0.62 

 

EU2 
I find it easy to get the application to do 

what I want it to do. 
3.34 ± 0.58 

 

EU3 

It is easy for me to remember how to 

update the bed status using the 

application. 

3.43 ± 0.57 
 

EU4 I find this application easy to learn. 3.43 ± 0.62 
 

EU5 I find this application easy to use. 3.43 ± 0.54 
 

Satisfaction 3.42 ± 0.56 0.91 

S1 
The application works the way i want it 

to work. 
3.29 ± 0.55 

 

S2 
I can read the text in this application 

clearly 
3.50 ± 0.52 

 

S3 
I am satisfied with the interface of the 

application. 
3.39 ± 0.52 

 

S4 I like the color theme of the application. 3.50 ± 0.53 
 

S5 I feel i need to have the application. 3.48 ± 0.65 
 

S6 The application is pleasant to use. 3.45 ± 0.57 
 

S7 
I am satisfied with the use of the 

application. 
3.33 ± 0.56 

 
 

TABLE IV.  NEGATIVE FEEDBACK 

Negative factors Number (N =48) n (%) 

Internet/mobile network data 22 (45.8) 

Added workload 8 (16.7) 

iOS 3 (6.3) 

Not user-friendly 3 (6.3) 

Phone hanging 2 (4.2) 

Role-based access 2 (4.2) 

Lack of device 2 (4.2) 

Phone storage 2 (4.2) 

Misunderstanding from outsiders 2 (4.2) 

Cost 1 (2.1) 

Battery 1 (2.1) 
 

The participants are looking forward to the complete 
version of the BMMA. It certainly solves the problem of 
limited desktop computer access of the existing web-based 

system. Nurses can access the bed management system through 
their smartphones with an internet connection. A pilot version 
of the BMMA was launched and evaluated. The role-based 
restrictions, the integration with the existing web system, and 
other important functionality issues are in the app’s design. The 
bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policy [10] will be adopted to 
ensure the protection of patient data. 

TABLE V.  POSITIVE FEEDBACK 

Positive factors Number (N =56) n (%) 

Easy 26 (46.4) 

Updated and transparent information 13 (23.2) 

Helpful 6 (10.7) 

Saves time 6 (10.7) 

Speeds up task 5 (8.9) 

 

VI. CONCLUSION 

A smartphone-based mobile application, the Bed 
Management Mobile Application (BMMA), is proposed to 
complement the existing web system in Hospital Canselor 
Tuanku Muhriz (HCTM) regarding bed management. BMMA 
allows the user to view and update the bed information anytime 
and anywhere which is a more convenient approach than the 
existing PC-based system. A feasibility study of applying 
mobile application in HCTM has been carried out. Based on 
the study’s findings the main OS platform using by the nurses 
in HCTM is Android while the participants mostly used the 
four major mobile network service providers in Malaysia. 
Hence, the future mobile application development should 
consider internet connectivity of these four providers inside the 
HCTM’s buildings. Other than that, the usability questionnaire 
received an average result. However, users gave an overall 
positive feedback and agree that the mobile application will be 
helpful for them in executing their routine tasks in bed 
management. They are looking forward to having a mobile 
application to help them. 

ACKNOWLEDGMENT 

This study is a part of a research funded by the Ministry of 
Higher Education (MOHE) (FRGS/1/2018/ICT04/UKM/02/4) 
and the Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (AP-2017-007/2). 

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