Abstract: An appointment scheduling method wherein available time slots for an appointment are ranked according to the result of a balancing of importance factors adhered by an enterprise to weights associated with the available time slots such as efficiency of use of resources, urgency of examination, financial impact etc.

Abstract: Scheduling systems for scheduling appointments on multiple sites need to be linked, if such systems use different databases. The activity to be performed by the performing site during the appointment may be given by a requesting code, specific for the requesting site. If the activity can be performed at the requesting site, i.e. the requesting site and the performing site are identical, then this “requesting code” may define that one or more resources are required for performing the scheduled appointment at the requesting site. The availability of these resources can be fetched from one or more databases coupled to the requesting site. If the performing site is different from the requesting site, the requesting code used at the performing site for the activity may be different from the requesting code used at the requesting site, and different resources may be requested by the performing site.

Abstract: The current invention is in the field of scheduling appointments for exams to be performed on patients in a clinical environment, where an appointment must be consistent with the availability of different resources, such as rooms, medical devices and medical or paramedical staff. An opportunity arises when two or more exams must be scheduled for one patient. These exams may be scheduled separately, however it may be possible that a first exam and other exams may be scheduled in one time slot. This depends on the compatibility of the first exam and the other exams and on the simultaneous availability of the resources, required for the first exam and the other exams. If the conditions are fulfilled, a plurality of exams may be combined in one time slot, and the scheduling systems has to schedule the first exam only, which scheduling is then valid for all other co-exams.

Abstract: A scheduling method is desclosed which allows simultaneous scheduling of multiple appointments. The method provides for grouping and chronological ordering of a plurality of exams for a patient according to attributes and allows the plurality of exams to be forwarded to a scheduling system for simultaneously scheduling all exams such that restrictions imposed during the grouping process are met.