We hear from two online queueing specialists on what the General Dental Council (GDC) can learn from commercial ticketing software to solve bottlenecks in the Overseas Registration Exam (ORE) booking process.
Prospective candidates for the ORE have reported payment issues, errors and overloaded servers since the GDC migrated the booking system to the myGDC portal. Many were unable to book a place to sit the exam, with some unsure if they had been successful despite payment having been taken.
A Part 2 booking was delayed by a week while the GDC carried out further testing, though candidates experienced the same malfunctions regardless.
But what exactly is causing these issues? Dentistry heard from Miruna Strandberg, head of marketing at Queue-it, and Matthew King, CEO of Queue-Fair, on why the ORE booking website is failing and how the bottlenecks can be managed. Both companies provide software which helps companies cope with high volumes of website traffic.
Why does website traffic lead to bottlenecks?
According to Miruna, the problem is not simply the high volume of traffic on a website but the number of transactions they attempt.
She said: ‘Most websites can handle thousands of concurrent visitors browsing content or sitting on the homepage. It’s when those thousands of visitors start performing dynamic transactions that systems begin to struggle.’
This creates a bottleneck which fails under the transaction burden. In short, the ORE portal is not crashing due to the number of visitors on the site, but because they are all trying to book a place simultaneously.
Miruna compared this to a live event environment. She said: ‘It’s like a stadium that can hold 100,000 people. Everything works fine while people are sitting in their seats. But if everyone wants to buy a drink, use the restroom, or leave the venue at the same time, bottlenecks form quickly and the experience deteriorates.’
What exactly is causing the ORE booking bottlenecks?
Miruna described a number of different transactions within the booking process with the potential for bottlenecks:
- Checking and updating available exam places
- Processing payments
- Communicating with third-party services that detect fraud or send confirmation emails.
Any of these processes could be responsible for the webpage malfunctioning.
When attempting to determine where the problem lies, Miruna advised that the first step would be to ‘measure the system’s true capacity under realistic load conditions and understand where performance begins to degrade’.
How can bottlenecks be managed?
Miruna identified two primary ways that a bottleneck can be managed: increasing capacity or controlling traffic flow.
Capacity can be increased by ‘scaling infrastructure, re-architecting systems, redesigning business processes, or investing in additional technology’. However, she notes that this can be complex, expensive, and sometimes impractical.
Matt therefore suggested that controlling visitor flow through a virtual waiting room would be the best solution. He said this ‘should hold the visitors away from the site in the minutes leading up to the sale, and then fairly add them to the online queue when it opens’.
Miruna explained: ‘Rather than allowing thousands of visitors to overwhelm a vulnerable system at once, a virtual waiting room receives incoming traffic, provides visitors with their position in line and estimated wait time, and admits them in a fair, first-in, first-out order at a rate the booking system can reliably handle.’
Neither company has examined the GDC’s systems directly, so their comments are based on general principles rather than a technical assessment of the ORE booking platform.
What are the benefits of a queue system?
A queue system would assign candidates a random position which Matt suggests ‘eliminates unfair advantage due to (for instance) some visitors having faster internet connections than others’.
He continued: ‘People that arrive after the queue has opened are added in first-come, first-served order, but behind everyone from pre-sale so it’s all completely fair.’
According to Miruna, this would control the flow of site visitors to match capacity ‘rather than allowing demand spikes to overwhelm critical systems’.
Matt estimates that Queue-Fair’s queue system could be added to the GDC’s website in around five minutes, and that only its free tier would be required.
He added: ‘If they decided they need advanced features, or if there are many thousands of applicants, then they could upgrade to unlimited service, which starts at £150.’
Who already uses virtual waiting rooms?
Miruna also suggested monitoring traffic in real time and having contingency plans in place for unexpected demand, bot activity, or operational issues.
She said: ‘The most successful organisations combine capacity improvements with traffic orchestration strategies.’
These approaches are widely used for ticket sales at major events. Miruna said that ticket sellers ‘actively orchestrate online traffic by controlling visitor flow, filtering bots and other abusive traffic, monitoring events in real time, and managing session integrity throughout the purchase journey’.
However, queue systems have been used in educational contexts before. Queue-Fair has worked with educational establishments to manage registration day and/or results day, as well as government bodies, healthcare organisations, online retailers with busy product drops, and financial institutions.
Matt said: ‘The system is suitable for any website that gets too busy from time to time.’
Most notably, the software was used by the Royal College of Emergency Medicine for what it describes as ‘a very similar registration’ to the ORE.
The GDC has said it will implement a new candidate portal for exams taking place from 2027. It has not yet announced how the new system will manage periods of high demand.
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