Interaction protocols for cross-organisational workflows

Workflow technologies are widely used in industry and commerce to assist in the specification, execution and completion of well defined processes within organisations. As industrial and commercial relations have evolved, based on advances on information and communications technologies, cross-organisational workflow integration has become an important issue. Since organisations can have very different workflows, the creation of compatible workflows so that organisations can collaborate and/or carry out mutual transactions automatically in an integrated fashion can be a very complex and time consuming process. As a consequence, the development of technologies to support the creation and execution of compatible workflows is a most relevant issue. In the present article we introduce the JamSession coordination platform as a tool to implement cross-organisational workflow integration. JamSession is declarative and based on algebraic specification methods, and therefore workflow integration implemented using this platform can profit from formal behavioural analysis, based on which desired features and properties can be verified and/or obtained

Ambulatory Clinic Exam Room Design with respect to Computing Devices: A Laboratory Simulation Study

Background—Challenges persist regarding how to integrate computing effectively into the exam room, while maintaining patient-centered care. Purpose—Our objective was to evaluate a new exam room design with respect to the computing layout, which included a wall-mounted monitor for ease of (re)-positioning. Methods—In a lab-based experiment, 28 providers used prototypes of the new and older “legacy” outpatient exam room layouts in a within-subject comparison using simulated patient encounters. We measured efficiency, errors, workload, patient-centeredness (proportion of time the provider was focused on the patient), amount of screen sharing with the patient, workflow integration, and provider situation awareness. Results—There were no statistically significant differences between the exam room layouts for efficiency, errors, or time spent focused on the patient. However, when using the new layout providers spent 75% more time in screen sharing activities with the patient, had 31% lower workload, and gave higher ratings for situation awareness (14%) and workflow integration (17%). Conclusions—Providers seemed to be unwilling to compromise their focus on the patient when the computer was in a fixed position in the corner of the room and, as a result, experienced greater workload, lower situation awareness, and poorer workflow integration when using the old “legacy” layout. A thoughtful design of the exam room with respect to the computing may positively impact providers’ workload, situation awareness, time spent in screen sharing activities, and workflow integration

Portal Workflow Integration: Cardiff University I-WIRE Project

The I-WIRE project is designing and developing an enhanced deposit workflow that will be presented to Cardiff University's researchers via our Modern Working Environment portal. Presenting the workflow in this way gives us opportunities to integrate the deposit process and data with other research-related process and systems. We are also exploring DOI deposit, and a Web of Science import, within the same portal, all of which is aimed at making it easier for academics to deposit their publications

Portal Workflow Integration: Cardiff University I-WIRE Project

The I-WIRE project is designing and developing an enhanced deposit workflow that will be presented to Cardiff University's researchers via our Modern Working Environment portal. Presenting the workflow in this way gives us opportunities to integrate the deposit process and data with other research-related process and systems. We are also exploring DOI deposit, and a Web of Science import, within the same portal, all of which is aimed at making it easier for academics to deposit their publications

Heterogeneous hierarchical workflow composition

Workflow systems promise scientists an automated end-to-end path from hypothesis to discovery. However, expecting any single workflow system to deliver such a wide range of capabilities is impractical. A more practical solution is to compose the end-to-end workflow from more than one system. With this goal in mind, the integration of task-based and in situ workflows is explored, where the result is a hierarchical heterogeneous workflow composed of subworkflows, with different levels of the hierarchy using different programming, execution, and data models. Materials science use cases demonstrate the advantages of such heterogeneous hierarchical workflow composition.This work is a collaboration between Argonne National Laboratory and the Barcelona Supercomputing Center within the Joint Laboratory for Extreme-Scale Computing. This research is supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Advanced Scientific Computing Research, under contract number DE-AC02- 06CH11357, program manager Laura Biven, and by the Spanish Government (SEV2015-0493), by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (contract TIN2015-65316-P), by Generalitat de Catalunya (contract 2014-SGR-1051).Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Redesign of a computerized clinical reminder for colorectal cancer screening: a human-computer interaction evaluation

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Based on barriers to the use of computerized clinical decision support (CDS) learned in an earlier field study, we prototyped design enhancements to the Veterans Health Administration's (VHA's) colorectal cancer (CRC) screening clinical reminder to compare against the VHA's current CRC reminder.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>In a controlled simulation experiment, 12 primary care providers (PCPs) used prototypes of the current and redesigned CRC screening reminder in a within-subject comparison. Quantitative measurements were based on a usability survey, workload assessment instrument, and workflow integration survey. We also collected qualitative data on both designs.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Design enhancements to the VHA's existing CRC screening clinical reminder positively impacted aspects of usability and workflow integration but not workload. The qualitative analysis revealed broad support across participants for the design enhancements with specific suggestions for improving the reminder further.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>This study demonstrates the value of a human-computer interaction evaluation in informing the redesign of information tools to foster uptake, integration into workflow, and use in clinical practice.</p

Case-oriented computer-based-training in radiology: concept, implementation and evaluation

BACKGROUND: Providing high-quality clinical cases is important for teaching radiology. We developed, implemented and evaluated a program for a university hospital to support this task. METHODS: The system was built with Intranet technology and connected to the Picture Archiving and Communications System (PACS). It contains cases for every user group from students to attendants and is structured according to the ACR-code (American College of Radiology) [2]. Each department member was given an individual account, could gather his teaching cases and put the completed cases into the common database. RESULTS: During 18 months 583 cases containing 4136 images involving all radiological techniques were compiled and 350 cases put into the common case repository. Workflow integration as well as individual interest influenced the personal efforts to participate but an increasing number of cases and minor modifications of the program improved user acceptance continuously. 101 students went through an evaluation which showed a high level of acceptance and a special interest in elaborate documentation. CONCLUSION: Electronic access to reference cases for all department members anytime anywhere is feasible. Critical success factors are workflow integration, reliability, efficient retrieval strategies and incentives for case authoring

Integrating Clinical Trial Imaging Data Resources Using Service-Oriented Architecture and Grid Computing

Clinical trials which use imaging typically require data management and workflow integration across several parties. We identify opportunities for all parties involved to realize benefits with a modular interoperability model based on service-oriented architecture and grid computing principles. We discuss middleware products for implementation of this model, and propose caGrid as an ideal candidate due to its healthcare focus; free, open source license; and mature developer tools and support

Scientific Workflow Integration For Services Computing

In recent years, significant scientific advances are increasingly achieved through complex scientific processes. As the exponential growth in computing technologies and scientific data, a scientific workflow may comprise a large number of heterogeneous scientific services and applications, provided by different organizations. These services, applications, and their associated data are usually distributed across heterogeneous computing environments. The integration and management of such scientific workflows are pushing the limits of current workflow technology. This dissertation presents an integrated solution to composing, scheduling, executing and developing scientific workflows and scientific workflow management systems. To provide a foundation for workflow composition, scheduling, execution and management, we propose the first reference architecture for scientific workflow management systems. The reference architecture not only provides a high-level organization of subsystems and their interactions in a workflow system, but also provides a basis for comparison between different systems and a guidance for the architectural design of an SWFMS in a specific scientific domain. To integrate heterogeneous services and applications and enable them composed to workflows, we propose a task template model which not only provides an appropriate abstraction of heterogeneous services and applications, but also encapsulates the composition and mapping of shims and functional task components within a task interface. Our proposed task specification language (TSL) not only integrates heterogeneous services and applications into uniform workflow tasks, but also provides a solution to address both TYPE-I and TYPE-II shimming problems in composing scientific workflows. To schedule scientific workflows in emerging services computing environments, we propose two workflow scheduling algorithms, the SHEFT algorithm and the SCPOR algorithm, to prioritize tasks in a workflow, map tasks onto suitable resources and order the execution of tasks on the assigned resources, so that the workflow makespan can be minimized. Our extensive experiments have shown that our proposed algorithms not only outperform other algorithms for large-scale, data-intensive and compute intensive workflows, but also allow the assigned resources elastically change on demand of the size of workflows. To execute workflows on distributed computing environments, we propose a task run model to model the run-time behaviors of tasks. The proposed task run description language (TRDL) enables the execution of task instances constructed from heterogeneous services and applications. We also develop an SOA based task management subsystem to manage all task templates, task instances and task runs for the invocation and execution of various heterogeneous task components. Finally, our developed SOA based workflow management system, the VIEW system, and a VIEW based workflow application system, the FiberFlow system, validate our architectures, models, languages, and algorithms

Charting a Course With NOMAP: Integrating Metadata Workflows Into a Traditional Cataloging Unit

The life of a cataloger today is in a state of flux; as libraries continue to transition from a predominately print world to a digital one, catalogers need to secure a functional future. To do so catalogers must change their mental models to stay flexible and pertinent in an ever-changing information environment. A recent digital project undertaken at the University of Montana provides an example of how research and developments in the area of metadata and bibliographic control have influenced cataloging and metadata workflow integration