Designing community care systems with AUML

This paper describes an approach to developing an appropriate agent environment appropriate for use in community care applications. Key to its success is that software designers collaborate with environment builders to provide the levels of cooperation and support required within an integrated agent–oriented community system. Agent-oriented Unified Modeling Language (AUML) is a practical approach to the analysis, design, implementation and management of such an agent-based system, whilst providing the power and expressiveness necessary to support the specification, design and organization of a health care service. The background of an agent-based community care application to support the elderly is described. Our approach to building agent–oriented software development solutions emphasizes the importance of AUML as a fundamental initial step in producing more general agent–based architectures. This approach aims to present an effective methodology for an agent software development process using a service oriented approach, by addressing the agent decomposition, abstraction, and organization characteristics, whilst reducing its complexity by exploiting AUML’s productivity potential. </p

A service oriented approach for guidelines-based clinical decision support using BPMN

Evidence-based medical practice requires that clinical guidelines need to be documented in such a way that they represent a clinical workflow in its most accessible form. In order to optimize clinical processes to improve clinical outcomes, we propose a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) based approach for implementing clinical guidelines that can be accessed from an Electronic Health Record (EHR) application with a Web Services enabled communication mechanism with the Enterprise Service Bus. We have used Business Process Modelling Notation (BPMN) for modelling and presenting the clinical pathway in the form of a workflow. The aim of this study is to produce spontaneous alerts in the healthcare workflow in the diagnosis of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD). The use of BPMN as a tool to automate clinical guidelines has not been previously employed for providing Clinical Decision Support (CDS)

Do we need one science of production in healthcare?

The question addressed is: Is there need, in health care, for one consolidated science of production? For responding to this question, the classical science of production is reviewed and the current approaches to production and service in healthcare are analysed as for their evolution and current status. It is found that these current movements are not self-aware of the restrictions deriving from their backgrounds, and of the resultant partiality in their approaches. It is concluded that improvement of healthcare is slowed down by the fragmentation of the related disciplines; thus one consolidated science of production (of healthcare) is needed

The E-health Strategic Research Orientation at the Centre for Telematics and Information Technology

This report gives an overview of research themes, research groups and research partners of the E-Health Strategic Research Orientation (SRO) at the University of Twente

The Triple Aim Journey: Improving Population Health and Patients' Experience of Care, While Reducing Costs

Provides an overview of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement's initiative designed to help improve population health, enhance patients' experience of care, and slow the growth of per capita costs. Outlines early results from three case study sites

The client-oriented model of cultural competence in healthcare organizations

The paper aims to propose a new model of cultural competence in health organizations based on the paradigm of client orientation. Starting from a literature review, this study takes inspiration from dimensions that characterize the cultural competence of health organizations, and re-articulates them in more detail by applying a client orientation view. The resulting framework is articulated into six dimensions (formal references; procedures and practices; cultural competences of human resources; cultural orientation toward client; partnership with community; and self-assessment) that define the ability of a health organization to achieve its mission, acknowledging, understanding, and valorizing cultural differences of internal clients (staff) and external clients (consumers). This study makes an effort to address the paucity of studies linking approaches to managing cultural diversity in health organizations with cultural competence within the framework of client orientation