Mobile Task Management for Medical Ward Rounds - The MEDo Approach

In hospitals, ward rounds are crucial for decision-making in the context of patient treatment processes. In the course of a ward round, new tasks are defined and allocated to physicians and nurses. In clinical practice, however, these tasks are not systematically managed. During ward rounds, they are jotted down using pen and paper, and their later processing is prone to errors. Furthermore, medical staff must keep track of the processing status of its tasks (e.g., medical orders). To relieve staff members from such a manual task management, the MEDo approach supports ward rounds by transforming the pen and paper worksheet to a mobile user interface on a tablet integrating process support, mobile task management, and access to the electronic patient record. Interviews we conducted have confirmed that medical staff craves for mobile task and process support on wards. Furthermore, in several user experiments, we have proven that MEDo puts task acquisition on a level comparable to that of pen and paper. Overall, with MEDo, physicians can create, monitor and share tasks using a mobile and user-friendly platform

Supporting medical ward rounds through mobile task and process management

In a hospital, ward rounds are crucial for task coordination and decision-making. In the course of knowledge-intensive patient treatment processes, it should be possible to quickly define tasks and to assign them to clinicians in a flexible manner. In current practice, however, task management is not properly supported. During a ward round, emerging tasks are jotted down using pen and paper and their processing is prone to errors. In particular, staff members must manually keep track of the status of their tasks. To relieve them from such a manual task management, we introduce the MedicalDo (MEDo) approach. It transforms the pen and paper worksheet to a digital user interface on a mobile device. Thereby, MEDo integrates process support, task management, and access to the patient record. Interviews of medical staff members have revealed that they crave for a mobile process and task support. This has been further confirmed in a case study we conducted in four different wards. Finally, in user experiments, we have demonstrated that MEDo puts task acquisition on a level comparable to that of pen and paper. Overall, MEDo enables users to create, monitor and share medical tasks based on a mobile and user-friendly platform

Integrating Mobile Tasks with Business Processes: A Self-Healing Approach

Process management technology constitutes a fundamental component of any service-driven computing environment. Process management facilitates both the composition of services at design time and their orchestration at run time. In particular, when applying the service paradigm to enterprise integration management, high flexibility is required. In this context, atomic as well as composite services representing the business functions should be quickly adaptable to cope with dynamic business changes. Furthermore, they should enable mobile and quick access to enterprise information. The growing maturity of smart mobile devices has fostered their prevalence in knowledge-intensive areas in the enterprise as well. As a consequence, process management technology needs to be enhanced with mobile task support. However, tasks hitherto executed stationarily, cannot be simply transferred in order to run on smart mobile devices. Many research groups focus on the partitioning of processes and the distributed execution of the resulting fragments on smart mobile devices. Opposed to this fragmentation concept, this chapter proposes an approach to enable the robust and flexible execution of single process tasks on smart mobile devices by provisioning self-healing techniques to address the smooth integration of mobile tasks with business processes

Context-Based Handling of Mobile Process Activities

Process technology constitutes a crucial component of information systems. In this context, high flexibility is required as business functions must be quickly adaptable to cope with dynamic business changes. As recent developments allow for the use of mobile devices in knowledge-intensive areas, it is often demanded to enhance process-aware information systems with mobile activity support. In general, the technical integration of this activity type with existing process management technology is challenging. For example, protocols governing the communication between mobile devices and process management systems must be adapted. If a mobile context shall be additionally considered, the integration gets even more complex. However, the use of a mobile context offers advantages. For example, the mobile activity execution time may be decreased if mobile activities are only assigned to those users whose location is beneficial. This chapter proposes an approach to enable the robust handling of single process activities on mobile devices based on a mobile process model

Mobile Business Processes : Challenges, Opportunities and Effect

Smartphones and tablets have become an important part of people’s daily life and people have started to use them for work purposes as well. Mobile computing has location and time flexibility advantages that enterprise can utilize with care. The world of mobile technologies is fragmented. It can be a complex task for a non-mobile software company to decide what kind of smartphone application they want for their customers. People have different expectations on mobile applications and their usage habits differ. Mobile applications are more prone to disturbance because of their nature and again still performing critical tasks. They cannot be treated same as stationary computers in terms of business process support. This thesis presents an analysis of effects and opportunities brought by mobile devices to enterprises from small to large scale based on the literature survey. The thesis helps enterprises to understand what kind of approach to mobile support best suits their needs and how to handle the mobile-specific challenges in their IT systems

Supporting Information Management in ICU Rounding

Team rounds on patients in the hospital's intensive care unit (ICU) results in the generation of several paper-based and digital notes. Paper-based notes, although short-lived, act as translational artifacts that help organize and coordinate patient information and care. Maintaining double records of paper and digital notes can introduce several awareness and coordination problems such as contextually situating clinicians as to a patient's on-going care. Based on the design requirements derived from our fieldwork, we propose a new technology, PANI (Patient-centered Notes and Information Manager). PANI is a clinical tool that integrates the use of a mobile application, paper-based artifacts, and a wearable device (such as FitBit) in one system to support the management of notes and action-items that are generated throughout a typical ICU clinical shift. In this paper, we present the functional design of PANI and our preliminary findings of a participatory study that included 15 clinician participants

Context-Based Assignment and Execution of Human-Centric Mobile Services

Performing tasks with the help of smart mobile devices is demanded for various areas in everyday life. In business environments, for example, tasks requiring complex paper work (e.g., paper-based documentation in the context of machine maintenance) shall be digitally transformed with the use of smart mobile devices. However, the realization of respective mobile applications is challenging as coordination issues have to be addressed in this context. For example, mobile application A performing task A may have to be finished before mobile application B performing task B may be started, i.e., human-centric mobile services need to be coordinated. To accomplish the latter, a formal context capturing service dependencies is required, while at the same time considering the mobile context of each involved human-centric mobile service needs to be considered. The presented approach extends existing process management technology with mobile activities to enable this. More precisely, we developed a mobile context framework that allows for a robust and flexible execution of mobile activities. The feasibility of the approach is demonstrated through a prototypical implementation as well as case studies. Altogether, the support of human-centric mobile services is promising regarding work efficiency in numerous scenarios and application domains in everyday life

Conception and Implementation of a Location-based Augmented Reality Kernel

The availability of sophisticated mobile applications on many platforms constitutes a challenging task. In order to cover the most relevant mobile operating systems and make the best use of their underlying features, the native development on the target platform still others the most diverse possibilities. Aside from the most widely spread mobile operating systems - namely Android and iOS - the Windows Phone platform oters a unique design language and many developer tools and technologies for building Windows Store apps. Making use of the capabilities of modern smartphones enables the development and use of desktop-like applications. The built-in sensors, cameras and powerful processing units of such a device other a versatile platform to build against. As a result, many mobile applications and technologies have emerged. However, information on profound insight into the development of such an application is hard to find. In this work, the development of AREA on the Windows Phone 8.1 platform is presented. AREA is a location-based mobile Augmented Reality engine and already available on Android and iOS. By porting the engine to yet another mobile platform, more third-party mobile business applications can integrate AREA and make use of its efficient and modular design. This work also points out the differences in implementation between the Windows Phone version and its counterparts on Android and iOS. Insights into the architecture and some references to the mathematical basis are also provided

Using Vital Sensors in Mobile Healthcare Business Applications: Challenges, Examples, Lessons Learned

Today, sensors are increasingly used for data collection. In the medical domain, for example, vital signs (e.g., pulse or oxygen saturation) of patients can be measured with sensors and used for further processing. In this paper, different types of applications will be discussed whether sensors might be used in the context of these applications and their suitability for applying external sensors to them. Furthermore, a system architecture for adding sensor technology to respective applications is presented. For this purpose, a real-world business application scenario in the field of well-being and fitness is presented. In particular, we integrated two different sensors in our fitness application. We report on the lessons learned from the implementation and use of this application, e.g., in respect to connection and data structure. They mainly deal with problems relating to the connection and communication between the smart mobile device and the external sensors, as well as the selection of the appropriate type of application. Finally, a robust sensor framework, arising from this fitness application is presented. This framework provides basic features for connecting sensors. Particularly, in the medical domain, it is crucial to provide an easy to use toolset to relieve medical staff

Collaborative Process Modeling with Tablets and Touch Tables — A Controlled Experiment

Collaborative process modeling involves business analysts and subject matter experts in order to properly capture and document process knowledge. In this context, appropriate tool support is required to motivate these user groups to actively participate in collaborative process modeling. This paper presents a collaborative process modeling tool that enables the experts to create, visualize and evolve process models based on multi-touch devices (e.g., tablets and touch tables). In particular, users may edit process models on their tablets and share the created or changed process models with other team members on a common touch table. For this purpose, a sophisticated and intuitive interaction concept is provided. Furthermore, results of a controlled experiment, evaluating the influence the use of tablets has on collaborative process modeling based on touch tables, are presented. Altogether the experimental results emphasize the high potential of multi-touch tools for collaborative process modeling