Patient information store and retrieve

Assumption: patient data is stored as binary records in the file patient.dat; the program adds patients and then retrieves all of them.

#include <iostream>
#include <fstream>
#include <cstring>
using namespace std;

class Patient {
    int id;
    char name[30], address[30], type[20];   // type: e.g. OPD / Emergency
    int age;
public:
    void getData() {
        cout << "Patient ID: ";   cin >> id;
        cout << "Name: ";         cin.ignore(); cin.getline(name, 30);
        cout << "Address: ";      cin.getline(address, 30);
        cout << "Age: ";          cin >> age;
        cout << "Type: ";         cin.ignore(); cin.getline(type, 20);
    }
    void display() {
        cout << id << "\t" << name << "\t" << address << "\t"
             << age << "\t" << type << endl;
    }
};

int main() {
    Patient p;
    int n;
    cout << "How many patients? ";
    cin >> n;

    ofstream fout("patient.dat", ios::binary | ios::app);   // store
    for (int i = 0; i < n; i++) {
        p.getData();
        fout.write((char*)&p, sizeof(p));
    }
    fout.close();

    ifstream fin("patient.dat", ios::binary);                // retrieve
    cout << "\nID\tName\tAddress\tAge\tType\n";
    while (fin.read((char*)&p, sizeof(p)))
        p.display();
    fin.close();
    return 0;
}

write() and read() copy the whole object as bytes, so fixed-size character arrays are used instead of string.