Object-aware Process Support in Healthcare Information Systems: Requirements, Conceptual Framework and Examples

The business processes to be supported by healthcare information systems are highly complex, producing and consuming a large amount of data. Besides, the execution of these processes requires a high degree of flexibility. Despite their widespread adoption in industry, however, traditional process management systems (PrMS) have not been broadly used in healthcare environments so far. One major reason for this drawback is the missing integration of business processes and business data in existing PrMS; i.e., business objects (e.g., medical orders, medical reports) are usually maintained in specific application systems, and are hence outside the control of the PrMS. As a consequence, most existing PrMS are unable to provide integrated access to business processes and business objects in case of unexpected events, which is crucial in the healthcare domain. In this context, the PHILharmonicFlows framework offers an innovative object-aware process management approach, which tightly integrates business objects, functions, and processes. In this paper, we apply this framework to model and control the processes in the context of a breast cancer diagnosis scenario. First, we present the modeling components of PHILharmonicFlows framework applied to this scenario. Second, we give insights into the operational semantics that governs the process execution in PHILharmonicFlows. Third, we discuss the lessons learned in this case study as well as requirements from the healthcare domain that can be effectively handled when using an object-aware process management system like PHILharmonicFlows. Overall, object-aware process support will allow for a new generation of healthcare information systems treating both data and processes as first class citizens

Enhancing the Case Handling Paradigm to Support Object-aware Processes

Despite the widespread adoption of process management systems (PrMS) by industry, there exist numerous processes that cannot be adequately supported by PrMS so far. A common characteristic of these processes, which is usually neglected by traditional activity-centric PrMS, is the role of data as driver for process modeling and enactment. To overcome the limitations caused by missing integration of data and process, several data-centric process management approaches have emerged. A popular one is the Case Handling (CH) paradigm. However, previous case studies pointed out that, although it targets some of the limitations from activity-centric PrMS, the integration of processes and data supported by CH is still unsatisfactory. In this paper, we present the lessons learned from previous case studies and discuss the limitations of CH. We then present the PHILharmonicFlows framework, which enhances the power of data-centric approaches such as CH by enforcing a well-defined modeling methodology governing the object-centric specification and execution of processes and based on a formal operational semantics

Integrated Modeling of Process- and Data-Centric Software Systems with PHILharmonicFlows

Process- and data-centric software systems require a tight integration of processes, functions, data, and users. Thereby, the behavioral perspective is described by process models, while the information perspective is captured in a data model. Eliciting and capturing requirements of such software systems in a consistent way is a challenging task, demanding that both process and data model are well aligned and consistent with each other. While traditional software modeling languages do not allow for an explicit integration of data and process models, activity-centric process modeling languages tend to neglect the role of data as a driver of process execution; i.e., business objects are usually outside the control of the process, normally stored in external databases. To overcome this drawback, PHILharmonicFlows provides a comprehensive framework for enabling object-aware process support. In addition, a sound specification of process- and object-centric software systems becomes possible. In this paper, we present a requirements modeling approach that provides methodological guidance for modeling large process- and data-centric software systems based on PHILharmonicFlows. Such guidance will foster the introduction of respective software systems in the large scale

Towards Object-aware Process Support in Healthcare Information Systems

The processes to be supported by healthcare information systems are highly complex, and they produce and consume a large amount of data. Besides, they require a high degree of flexibility. Despite their widespread adoption in industry, however, traditional process management systems (PrMS) have not been broadly used in healthcare environments so far. One major reason for this is the missing integration of processes with business data; i.e., business objects (e.g., medical orders or reports) are usually outside the control of a PrMS. By contrast, our PHILharmonicFlows framework offers an object-aware process management approach, which tightly integrates business objects and processes. In this paper, we use this framework to support a breast cancer diagnosis scenario. We discuss the lessons learned from this case study as well as requirements from the healthcare domain that can be effectively met by an object-aware process management system

Schema Evolution in Object and Process-Aware Information Systems: Issues and Challenges

Enabling process flexibility is crucial for any process-aware information system (PAIS). In particular, implemented processes may have to be frequently adapted to accommodate to changing environments and evolving needs. When evolving a PAIS, corresponding process schemas have to be changed in a controlled manner. In the context of object-aware processes, which are characterized by a tight integration of process and data, PAIS evolution not only requires process schema evolution, but the evolution of data and user authorization schemas as well. Since the different schemas of an object-aware PAIS are tightly integrated, modifying one of them usually requires concomitant changes of the other schemas. This paper presents a framework for object-aware process support and discusses major requirements and challenges for enabling schema evolution in object-aware PAISs

Towards Schema Evolution in Object-aware Process Management Systems

Enterprises want to improve the lifecycle support for their businesses processes by modeling, enacting and monitoring them based on process management systems (PrMS). Since business processes tend to change over time, process evolution support is needed. While process evolution is well understood in traditional activity-centric PrMS, it has been neglected in object-aware PrMS so far. Due to the tight integration of processes and data, in particular, changes of the data and process schemes must be handled in an integrated way; i.e., the evolution of the data schema might affect the process schema and vice versa. This paper presents our overall vision on the controlled evolution of object-aware processes. Further, it discusses fundamental requirements for enabling the evolution of object-aware process schemas in PHILharmonicFlows, a framework targeting at comprehensive support of object-aware processes

Applying Activity Patterns for Developing an Intelligent Process Modeling Tool

Due to their high level of abstraction and their reusability, workflow patterns are increasingly attracting the interest of both BPM researchers and BPM tool vendors. Frequently, process models can be assembled out of a set of recurrent business functions (e.g., task execution request, approval, notification), each of them having generic semantics that can be described as activity pattern. To our best knowledge, so far, there has been no extensive work implementing such activity patterns in a process modeling tool. In this paper we present an approach for modeling business processes and workflows. It is based on a suite which, when being implemented in a process modeling tool, allows to design business processes based on well-defined (process) activity patterns. Our suite further provides support for analysing and verifying certain properties of the composed process models (e.g., absence of deadlocks and livelocks). Finally, our approach considers both business processes designed from scratch and processes extracted from legacy systems

A Tool for Supporting Object-Aware Processes

Although the popularity of activity-centric process management systems (PrMS) has increased during the last decade, there still exist business processes that cannot be adequately supported by these PrMS. A common characteristic of these processes, which is neglected by current activity-centric PrMS, is their need for object-awareness; i.e., the explicit processing of business data and business objects respectively. In the PHILharmonicFlows project, characteristic properties of object-aware processes were identified and an advanced framework for their proper support was designed. In this paper, we present a proof-of-concept prototype implementing some of the fundamental concepts of the PHILharmonicFlows framework. Overall, this initiative will result in a new generation of process management technology

Verifying Existence, Completeness and Sequences of Semantic Process Patterns in Real Workflow Processes

In this paper we present a collection of high level workflow activity patterns based on the semantic of specific business functions (e.g., notification, task execution request, approval). In particular we discuss three pattern samples (approval, unidirectional and decision patterns). Moreover we gather the results of an analysis of their adoption on a wide set of real workflow processes (models). The analyses showed that the patterns are not only enough but also necessary to model all the 190 workflow processes which were subject of the investigation. We also show and discuss specific sequences or combination of patterns which were more often in the workflow processes analyzed. In larger research we apply these patterns as well as the analyses results in the development of a suite for process modeling and normalization

Inventing Less, Reusing More and Adding Intelligence to Business Process Modeling

Recently, a variety of workflow patterns has been proposed focusing on specific aspects like control flow, data flow, and resource assignments. Though these patterns are relevant for implementing Business Process Modeling (BPM) tools and for evaluating the expressiveness of BPM languages, they do not contribute to reduce redundant specifications of recurrent business functions when modeling business processes. Furthermore, contemporary BPM tools do not support process designers in defining, querying, and reusing activity patterns as building blocks for process modeling. Related to these problems this paper proposes a set of activity patterns, evidences their practical relevance, and introduces a BPM tool for the modeling of business processes based on the reuse of these activity patterns. Altogether our approach fosters reuse of business functions specifications and helps to improve the quality and comparability of business process models