The medical department in University of Turku was looking to digitize an old-fashioned process of collecting pen & paper logbooks from medical trainees specializing in general practice. We, Team Doctornal, co-designed and built with the medical department a modern solution tailored for their needs.

Improved productivity

Doctornal is a mobile-friendly web application used by trainees to keep a log of their specialization phase. By nature, specialization is a quite mobile time for trainees as they are required to work in hospitals or health centers that can be anywhere in Finland. Tutors and teachers have an access to the application to assist them with following the progress of their trainees. Doctornal is also equipped with a chat functionality that facilitates communication between tutors, teachers and trainees. But perhaps the most important feature of Doctornal is its ability to automatically generate a PDF of trainees’ logbooks and that generated document can be used in official contexts.

Doctornal saves time and reduces workload on administrative staff by automating a process that previously required a lot of paper documents and by offering an online medium for following trainees progress anywhere, anytime.

Implementation

Doctornal was implemented using Python, Django, Bootstrap, JavaScript and MySQL. We were able to meet the requirements found in the co-design process and produce a working prototype. We believe the end result is a step forward in terms of the process itself and not just a shift from paper to a digital medium.