Locum Monkey approached 360innovate with an innovative idea to create a networking website for UK health service professionals that would allow general practice surgeries to find a locum quickly and cost effectively.
Locum Monkey required a website with bespoke web development that had a search facility allowing GP practices to find locum doctors available in the local area to fill vacancies. The website had to be able to produce a list of results and have the functionality to allow the GP practice to send SMS messages to a selected number of recipients to enquire whether or not they are interested in the vacancy . If interested in the vacancy the locum will then have the ability send an SMS message back sayin “yes” and the GP surgeries will then be provided with a list of doctors who have replied to the text as interested.
The Locum Monkey project was a web programmers dream and rather than have myself waffle on about it I would prefer to allow John McCollum, our resident web programmer, tell you about Locum Monkey and its development himself.
“When 360innovate were approached to build locummonkey.co.uk, it quickly became apparent that this project was going to be quite complex. There were many complex features, four types of users with very different needs, and integration with three third party services!
With that in mind, we had had to make sure that the site was properly planned from the outset. Working from the client’s initial idea, we built an initial technical specification which moved through several iterations, until both the client and ourselves were satisfied. We then turned this technical specification into a user-interaction map, defining how each user would interact with the site.
With the planning complete, we began to build the site! We used the Codeigniter PHP framework, as we have found it to be both powerful and flexible. It combines practicality with a lightweight footprint to give us the best trade-off between development time and site performance.
For the user interface, we made extensive use of the jQuery library. Again, this library provides lots of ‘out of the box’ functionality without impacting on site performance.
Perhaps one of the more interesting aspects of the site was the integration of an SMS messaging system. Users can send text messages to locum doctors who may be looking for employment, or can build their own databases of mobile numbers to send texts to. In addition, SMS replies can be sent ‘to the site’, resulting in a hassle-free and interactive experience for all.
The emphasis for this site has always been on the user experience, and I think we have succeeded in building a fun, attractive, and above all, useful site.”
