Hold your place in line, from home.

The wait starts before sunrise.

It is 5:40 in the morning outside a hospital in Addis Ababa. A mother has brought her son for a check-up. They are not first in line; they are forty-third. Her sister has taken the day off work to come with them, because no one knows how long this will take. By noon they will have queued for registration, for the doctor and for the laboratory, and spent most of the day standing in corridors.

Scenes like this play out across the country every day. The time is lost, and so is the trust: when nobody can see the line, everybody stands in it.

Waiting isn’t the problem. Not knowing is.

People will wait patiently if they know where they stand. The crowd in the corridor exists because the queue is invisible. So we set out to make the line visible to everyone who depends on it, wherever they are.

Designed for the people, phones and places it serves.

Amharic, first class.

Every patient screen, every display message and every staff label exists in Amharic and English. Ge’ez script is set with care, not squeezed into a Latin layout.

Open a link0 MB to install

Nothing to install.

Patients open a link. There is no app to download and no storage to free up, which matters on entry-level phones.

0493

Your phone number is your account.

Sign-in is a phone number and a six-digit code. No email, no password to forget.

Any screen becomes a display.

A waiting-room screen is a six-character link opened on any television with a browser. No special hardware.

Three experiences, one live queue.

Patients join from their phone. Staff move the line from a console. The waiting room watches a screen. All three stay in step, in real time.

Signature moment 1 · Your place, in your pocket

Go home. We’ll tell you when to come back.

Patients pick a hospital, see how many people are waiting in each department and how long it should take, and join. Their ticket updates live. When their turn approaches, the app tells them when to set off, based on the travel time they have entered.

9:41

1A ticket number you can read from across a room2“Time to head to the hospital”, timed to the patient’s own journey3Live position and estimated wait4Several tickets at once, for families

1. 1A ticket number you can read from across a room
2. 2“Time to head to the hospital”, timed to the patient’s own journey
3. 3Live position and estimated wait
4. 4Several tickets at once, for families

9:41

9:41

9:41

9:41

9:41

Signature moment 2 · One calm screen for a long shift

Call the next patient in one keystroke.

Reception staff work fast, often on shared computers and hospital wifi. The console puts “Call next” at the top of every queue and on the C key. Each counter has its own lane: complete, skip, mark a no-show or recall. Walk-in patients without a phone are added in seconds, and intake can pause for a break while calling continues.

EthioHospital · Live queue

1Every department one click away2“Call next”, also on the keyboard3One lane per counter4Everyone waiting, with an estimated wait for each position

1. 1Every department one click away
2. 2“Call next”, also on the keyboard
3. 3One lane per counter
4. 4Everyone waiting, with an estimated wait for each position

Walk-in

Walk-in

Intake paused

Intake paused

Signature moment 3 · A room that knows who’s next

Read from the back of the room.

The waiting-room screen shows the number being served and its counter in type sized for the far wall, the next five in line, how many are waiting and how long it will take. Messages run in Amharic and English, a clock keeps time, and a chime sounds with every call.

Englishአማርኛ

Signature moment 4 · Fair by design

One number per patient. Every call on the record.

A queue only works if people trust it. Ticket numbers are issued one at a time, even when a dozen patients join at the same second. “Call next” can never take the same patient twice. Every call, completion, no-show and pause is written to an audit log that cannot be edited or deleted.

12

patients joining at the same instant in testing, each with a unique number in order

8

states a ticket can be in, with rules for every move between them

0

patients called twice

100%

of staff actions written to the audit log

EthioHospital · Audit log

Ready for the first hospital, and the fiftieth.

EthioHospital manages queues for multiple hospitals on one platform, with a separate workspace for each. A new hospital is set up in a single form, names in both languages, with its first administrator. From there, the hospital team manages its own departments, counters, staff access and waiting-room displays.

HospitalsAdd a hospitalReports

EthioHospital · Platform

A brand built on warmth and order.

Brand identity. The EthioHospital wordmark pairs a confident serif with a gold accent. A band inspired by tibeb, the woven borders of traditional Ethiopian cloth, frames the patient app and the waiting-room screen. Deep green for calm, gold for the moment that matters: your number.

Two voices, one system. The patient side is warm and reassuring. The staff side is quiet and dense, because people look at it all day. Both share one set of colours, type and components.

Explored, then refined. We designed every screen as a clickable prototype and refined the staff console through three directions, from expressive to calm, before the approved design went into production.

The same queue, on every phone.

Not every patient has a smartphone, and the product is planned for that from the start. Each new channel will connect to the same queue engine that powers the app.

1. Now · Phase 1

   Patient web app, staff console, waiting-room displays and the multi-hospital platform. Built and deployed, ready for launch.

2. Next · Phase 2

   SMS and USSD, so patients on feature phones can join a line, check their place and get called with a text.

3. Then · Phase 3

   Self-service kiosks at the hospital entrance, with printed tickets for walk-in patients.

From the first plan to a platform ready for launch.