Authors:
Monica Winge
;
Paul Johannesson
;
Erik Perjons
and
Benkt Wangler
Affiliation:
Stockholm University, Sweden
Keyword(s):
Process Conglomeration, Patient Care Process, Coordination Theory, Speech Act Theory, Information Services.
Related
Ontology
Subjects/Areas/Topics:
Artificial Intelligence
;
Biomedical Engineering
;
Cardiovascular Technologies
;
Cloud Computing
;
Collaboration and e-Services
;
Complex Systems Modeling and Simulation
;
Computing and Telecommunications in Cardiology
;
Data Engineering
;
Design and Development Methodologies for Healthcare IT
;
e-Business
;
e-Health
;
Enterprise Information Systems
;
Health Engineering and Technology Applications
;
Health Information Systems
;
Healthcare Management Systems
;
Integration/Interoperability
;
Interoperability
;
Knowledge Management and Information Sharing
;
Knowledge-Based Systems
;
Medical and Nursing Informatics
;
Ontologies and the Semantic Web
;
Platforms and Applications
;
Sensor Networks
;
Simulation and Modeling
;
Software Agents and Internet Computing
;
Software and Architectures
;
Symbolic Systems
Abstract:
The organisation and processes of today’s health and social care are becoming ever more complex as a consequence of societal trends, including an ageing population and an increased reliance on care at home. One aspect of the increased complexity is that a single patient may receive care from several separate care providers, which easily results in situations with potentially incoherent, uncoordinated and interfering care processes. In order to describe and analyse such situations, the paper introduces the notion of a process conglomeration. This is defined as a set of patient care processes that all influence the same patient, which are overlapping in time, and that all have the goal of improving or maintaining the health and social wellbeing of the patient. Problems and challenges of process conglomerations are investigated using coordination theory and speech act theory. In order to address the challenges, a number of information services are proposed.