Optician's customer record administration system

Software	OO language with good web interface tools, such as PHP or JSP plus HTML and CSS, plus a DBMS
Covers	Design and development of an interactive database system.
Skills Required	Programming, databases, interface design.
Challenge	Conceptual ?? Technical ??? Programming ??

Brief Description

Some opticians still keep their customer records on paper, or to be more accurate, cardboard. This provides the flexibility of freeform text at the cost (1) of not enabling efficient searches, so that records need to be found by fishing through alphabetically ordered paper files in filing cabinets, and (2) not enabling any kind of analysis of patterns in the customer data. Some people working at such opticians' businesses think this is a little old-fashioned.

Your challenge in this project is to build an interactive database system, either using an HTML interface or a standalone GUI interface, to enable opthalmologists and other members of staff in an optician's business to record details of customers, their test results and prescriptions, and their purchases. This should support rapid retrieval of information about particular customers, and sharing of this information between authorized users of the system.

The project involves investigating the opticians' and opthalmologists' requirements, including how much they need to maintain freeform notes as well as information that can be slotted into the appropriate fields in forms in a prescribed format. How can the system be made efficient enough to be an efficiency win over a paper card system that trades speed of access for speed of record creation?

Extensions

The biggest advantage of computerized record keeping is the ability to do computational data analysis with the customer records, to spot trends and generalizations and anticipate likely stock needs. What data analysis can the system do? What reports can it generate?

The system would need to take security very seriously. An add-on would be management of authorizaton of access to enable customers to get at their own records, and other affiliated businesses and medical practitioners to get at customer records.

The system could be made more elaborate by tracking payments made to the optician's business.

Opticians need to keep in stock large numbers of different frames from which their customers needing new glasses can select. A stock control system would be a useful add-on, especially if it can handle different business models for the advertising and purchase of frames.

Variant

A system designed for a business environment that didn't do credit or debit card payments regularly might gain from a system that could handle other kinds of payments. Ideally it would provide a way to handle payments to the optician's business via Paypal.

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