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Alerts for Healthcare Process and Data Integration (PDF)
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In healthcare chain workflow management, urgent requests and critical messages in these systems (referred to as alerts) have to be delivered and handled timely. Presently, most systems cannot address urgency and alerts are often handled in an ad-hoc manner. In this paper, we propose a sophisticated alert management system (AMS) for effective healthcare chain workflow management under urgent constraints. We develop a model for specifying alerts, in which alerts are associated with healthcare tasks and a set of parameters are captured for their routing and urgency requirements. Further, alerts also serve as a mechanism for both process and data integration. The AMS matches the specialties of healthcare personnel and functionalities of Web Services providers to receive an alert, based on the alert specification. We then propose a routing mechanism that is initiated when the alert message is not acknowledged or serviced within the deadline, so that the alert can be re-routed if necessary. Monitoring is especially essential to ensure timeliness and availability of services, otherwise suitable exceptions should be raised and handled. We outline our implementation framework with Web Services for communications among healthcare service providers and mobile devices for medical professionals. We demonstrate the applicability of our approach with a pilot prototype medical house-call system (MHCS) with evaluations of medical professionals.
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... <Attach> can be used to add some attachments in email and IM. 3 The main function of IM 3 is to transform messages which come from other users or produced by the system into different message formats, and then to send them to users. The process is illustrated in Figure 2. ...
... In the model research, reference [2] proposes an Internet environment based general-purpose alert system model to improve the agility of ME-ADOME workflow systems. The authors in reference [3] modify the AMS model to make it have the ability of ad-hoc, which could be seen as the extension of the alert model's function. Messaging alert model should include multiple parameters concerned the alert type and content. ...
As the competitions among enterprises become more and more serious, and the production processes become increasingly complex, finding an efficient way to realize collaboration between different processes of industries is necessary for enterprises. Therefore, in order to support business collaboration, we propose an Integrated Multi-channel Messaging Model (IM 3 ) in this paper, which can be used as a stand-alone web-service in many different business systems. The main feature of our model of work is that it can integrate e-mail, SMS and instant message formats into a general purpose message format, and then send it out according to the requirements of users. The general purpose message format is transformed by the use of XSLT (extensible style language transformation), and is also extendible to more message formats. Besides, our model of work has functions of providing message alerts, the coordination between various business processes, the support of business process execution etc. It is an efficient model that provides an open, shared, distributed but centralized collaborative working environment.
... Alert Management System consists of two parts, namely alert creation module (Incoming Alert Monitor) and execution module (Outgoing Alert Monitor), in which the execution module is further divided into three sub-modules namely: role matching module, alert monitor module and priority urgency module (Chiu et al., 2004). The designed Alert Management System is shown in Fig. 3. Fig. 3. Division of the alert management system The process execution module will provide a response to incoming alerts as shown in Fig. 4. Incoming alerts shall be monitored and put into a queue and will be given appropriate services. ...
The study designed an information system model for Disease Management (DisMan) that met the specifications and needs of a consumer electronics manufacturer. The diseases monitored by this study were diabetes, hypertension and tuberculosis. Data were collected through interviews with the company’s human resources department and occupational health provider. As for the model, literature and online research were conducted to collect health standards and information system standards on existing DisMan systems. These standards were then compared to the consumer electronics manufacturer’s DisMan. The model was designed by utilizing class, use-case, as well as sequence diagrams. The result was an information system model with a registry system that can specifically support DisMan in a consumer electronics manufacturer. The registry system included a medical alert management system and a self-monitoring system. The latter system was supported by the former system, which can assist the DisMan’s staff in monitoring the employees’ scrupulousness regarding their health care plan as well as notifying the employees on lifestyle management.
... The study done by Paganelli and Giuli [9] describes a home-based services application framework for monitoring and handling chronic conditions by providing the medical status Recent Researches in E-Activities information of patients as well as an alert mechanism. Alert Management System consists of two parts, namely alert creating module (Incoming Alert Monitor) and execution module (Outgoing Alert Monitor), in which the execution module is further divided into three sub-modules, namely: role matching module, alert monitor module, and priority urgency module [10]. The designed Alert Management System is shown inFigure 3.Figure 3. Alert Management System In the Alert Management System, urgency level is classified into three levels as depicted inTable 1.Table 1 indicates that urgency function U(t) is defined as follows: ...
This study aimed to design an information system model for Disease Management (DisMan) that met the requirements and needs of a consumer electronics manufacturer. The diseases included in this study were diabetes, hypertension, and tuberculosis. Data were collected by interviewing the company's human resources department and occupational health provider. Study of literature and online research were conducted to collect the health standards and information system standards on existing DisMan. These standards were then compared with consumer electronics manufacturer's DisMan. The model was designed by utilizing class diagrams, use-case diagrams, and sequence diagrams. The result was an information system model of registry system that can support DisMan in a consumer electronics manufacturer. The registry system included alert management system and self-monitoring system. Self-monitoring system was supported by an alert management system, which could help DisMan's staff to monitor patient's adherence to the health care plan and could also notify patients to control their lifestyle.
Urgent requests and critical messages in healthcare applications must be delivered and handled timely instead of in an ad-hoc manner for most current systems. Therefore, we extend a sophisticated alert management system (AMS) to handle process and data integration in healthcare chain workflow management under urgency constraints. Alerts are associated with healthcare tasks to capture the parameters for their routing and urgency requirements in order to match them with the specialties of healthcare personnel or the functionalities of Web Services providers. Monitoring is essential to ensure the timeliness and availability of services as well as to ensure the identification of exceptions. We outline our implementation framework with Web Services for the communications among healthcare service providers together with mobile devices for medical professionals. We demonstrate the applicability of our approach with a prototype medical house-call system (MHCS) and evaluate our approach with medical professionals and various stakeholders.
Diabetes mellitus is a kind of chronic disease which can be effectively prevented and controlled only if the blood glucose level of the patient is constantly monitored, and the health education and professional medicine care is fully supported. In this paper a role-based intelligent diabetes mobile care system with alert mechanism in full diabetic care environment is proposed and implemented. The roles in our system include patients, physicians, nurses, and home care assistants. Each of the roles uses a mobile device such as a PDA with GSM module or a mobile phone to communicate with the server so that he or she can go around without restrictions. Our system provides alert management by using an automaticl urgency strategy to assure the information correctness and notification completeness so as to improve the quality of diabetes care. The reliability test and performance test have also shown that our system can provide fast and reliable assistance to the diabetes patients. With the help of our system, it is possible to set up a whole intelligent diabetes care chain in the care center.
Ubiquitous Health(U-Health) system witch focuses on automated applications that can provide healthcare to human anywhere and anytime using wired and wireless mobile technologies is becoming increasingly important. This system consists of a network system to collect data and a sensor module which measures pulse, blood pressure, diabetes, blood sugar, body fat diet with management and measurement of stress etc, by both wired and wireless and further portable mobile connections. In this paper, we propose an expert system using back-propagation to support the diagnosis of citizens in U-Health system.
Effective and efficient process management is of paramount importance in today's businesses. This is also indispensable for the maintenance of public road system. Since the maintenance work involves lots of humans and critical conditions, the complex communication among government departments often delay progress of work and exceed the scheduled completion date. In order to shorten the time of communication among departments and facilitate the workflow of different maintenance stages, we develop a conceptual model of road maintenance management system (RMMS). The RMMS makes use of alert mechanism and Web services for B2B interactions for handling urgent requests of road maintenance work. By using Web services, the RMMS integrates the internal systems of various government departments and major service providers. Based on the information provided by the involved parties, the RMMS analyzes and handles urgent requirements automatically and therefore could maintain the timeliness and accuracy of public road maintenance services
Diabetes mellitus is a kind of chronic disease which can be effectively prevented and controlled only if the blood glucose level of the patient is constantly monitored, and the health education and professional medicine care is fully supported. In this paper a role-based intelligent diabetes mobile care system with alert mechanism in full diabetic care environment is proposed and implemented. The roles in our system include patients, physicians, nurses, and home care assistants. Each of the roles uses a mobile device such as a PDA with GSM module or a mobile phone to communicate with the server so that he or she can go around without restrictions. Our system provides alert management by using an automatic urgency strategy to assure the information correctness and notification completeness so as to improve the quality of diabetes care. The reliability test and performance test have also shown that our system can provide fast and reliable assistance to the diabetes patients. With the help of our system, it is possible to set up a whole intelligent diabetes care chain in the care center.
Workflow technology is gaining attention in healthcare domain because it supports and assures fluent execution of complex healthcare business process. In order to implement workflow technology in healthcare environment, data-flow perspective issues should be considered. This paper analyzes basic characters of healthcare data from the point of workflow view, then presents an approach of process data driven workflow modeling method: the transformation of data fires events, which drive the transfer among tasks that have executable sequence in the workflow process. XML based workflow model description language is proposed as well, which can be mapped into executable software system framework conveniently and improve component's capability of reusing and systemic agility. Furthermore, an actual healthcare process modeling example, medical infection control process model, is presented, which illustrate our approach is feasible.
When a disaster occurs, timely actions in response to urgent requests conveyed by critical messages (known as alerts) constitute
a vital key to effectiveness. These actions include notifying potentially affected parties so that they can take precautionary
measures, gathering additional information, and requesting remedial actions and resource allocation. However, there are different
types of disasters such as epidemic outbreaks, natural disasters, major accidents, and terrorist attacks. At the same time,
there are also many different parties involved such as governments, healthcare institutions, businesses, and individuals.
To address these problems, we introduce a Disaster Notification and Resource Allocation System (DNRAS) based on an Alert Management
System (AMS) implemented through Web services. This unified platform supports timely interactions among various parties, focusing
on notification and monitoring, resource enquiry and allocation, as well as the mobility of information. We detail the mechanisms
of these functions in our system, illustrating the Web services interface parameters for communications and interoperability.
We illustrate the applicability of our approach with an example of an epidemic outbreak and discuss the advantage of our approach
with respect to various stakeholders of our system.
Workflow technology has recently been employed not only within businesses but also as a framework for implementing e-services over the Internet. Such e-services typically require collaborative enactment of workflows across multiple organizations. In this paper, we propose the use of workflow views as a fundamental support mechanism for the interoperability of multiple workflows across business organizations. We present a meta-model of workflow views and their semantics using a cross-organization workflow example based on a supply-chain e-service. We also formulate an interoperation model of workflow views and its consistency criteria. Finally, this paper presents an implementation of the model based on XML and contemporary Web services technologies, with adaptation to our E-ADOME workflow engine.
In an e-service environment, contracts are important for attaining business process interoperability and enforcing their proper enactment. An e-contract is the computerized facilitation or automation of a contract in a cross-organizational business process. We find that e-contract enforcement can be divided into multiple layers and perspectives, which has not been adequately addressed in the literature. This problem is challenging as it involves monitoring the enactment of business processes in counter parties outside an organization's boundary. This paper presents an architecture for e-contract enforcement with three layers, viz., document layer, business layer, and implementation layer. In the document layer, contracts are composed of different types of clauses. In the business layer, e-contract enforcement activities are defined through the realization of contract clauses as business rules in event-condition-action (ECA) form. In the implementation layer, cross-organizational e-contract enforcement interfaces are implemented with contemporary Enterprise Java Bean and Web services. We present a methodology for the engineering of e-contracts enforcement from a high-level document-view down to the implementation layer based on this architecture, using a supply-chain example. As a result, e-contracts can be seamlessly defined and enforced. Conceptual models of various layers are given in the Unified Modeling Language (UML).
A federated database system (FDBS) is a collection of cooperating database systems that are autonomous and possibly heterogeneous. In this paper, we define a reference architecture for distributed database management systems from system and schema viewpoints and show how various FDBS architectures can be developed. We then define a methodology for developing one of the popular architectures of an FDBS. Finally, we discuss critical issues related to developing and operating an FDBS.
Workflow technology has recently been employed not only within businesses but also as a framework for implementing services over the Internet. With the advancement and spreading of various mobile technologies and infrastructures, there is increasing demand for mobile users to connect to workflow management systems (WFMS). The basic requirement is to support SMS, WAP and web browsers on PDAs, in addition to regular web browsers on PCs. As the capabilities and bandwidth of these mobile devices are significantly inferior to computers over regular Internet connections, workflows have to be adapted to accommodate these limitations. Instead of redesigning or adapting workflows in an ad-hoc manner for different kinds of platforms, we propose a framework of workflow adaptation for mobile users based on three tiers of views: user interface views, data views and workflow views. User interface views provide alternative presentations of inputs and outputs. Data views summarize data over limited bandwidth and display them in different forms. Furthermore, we introduce a novel approach of applying workflow views to mobile workflow adaptation, where mobile users may execute a more concise version or modified procedures of a business process. The workflow view also serves as the centric mechanism for integrating user interface views and data views. We demonstrate the feasibility of our approach by extending a flexible web-based WFMS E-ADOME into ME-ADOME. The concepts are illustrated with a workflow of procurement approval.
In an e-service environment, workflow involves not only a single organization but also a number of business partners. Therefore, workflow inter-operability in such an environment is an important issue for enacting workflows. In this article, we introduce our approach of using workflow views as a fundamental support for E-service workflow inter-operability and for controlled visibility of (sub-)workflows by external parties. We discuss various aspects of a workflow view, and their semantics with example usage. Furthermore, we develop a contract model based on workflow views and demonstrate how management of e-contracts can be facilitated, with an Internet start-up E-service inter-organization workflow example.
Exception handling in workflow management systems (WFMSs) is a very important problem since it is not possible to specify all possible outcomes and alternatives. Effective reuse of existing exception handlers can greatly help in dealing with workflow exceptions. On the other hand, cooperative support for user-driven computer supported resolution of unexpected exceptions and workflow evolution at run-time is vital for an adaptive WFMS. We have been developing ADOME-WFMS as a comprehensive framework in which the problem of workflow exception handling can be adequately addressed. In this article, we present an adaptive exception manager and its web-based interface for ADOME-WFMS with procedures for supporting the following: reuse of exception handlers, thorough and automated resolution of expected exceptions, effective management of Problem Solving Agents, cooperative exception handling, user-driven computer supported resolution of unexpected exceptions, and workflow evolution.
Agent technologies have been deployed to model and implement e-commerce activities as multi-agent information systems (MAIS). Agents provide services to one another for mutual gain on behalf of their users. This paper presents an MAIS infrastructure based on belief-desire-in tension (BDI) agent architecture, constraint technology, and contemporary Web services to facilitate negotiation support. Further, the MAIS infrastructure also supports customizable degree of agent delegation for users on different platforms, with or without agent support. We present a constraint-based negotiation protocol extended for a MAIS environment and detail the required adaptations on different platforms from a three-tier implementation architecture aspect.
Assembling a coherent view of distributed heterogeneous information and information processing resources is a challenging and important process for inter-organizational collaboration and service provision. We refer to this process as information integration. However, traditional information integration approaches do not consider human intervention and exceptions, such as obtaining access approvals from service providers. Therefore, we propose a workflow-based approach to address this problem. This is particularly suitable in a loosely coupled and autonomous Web services environment. In this paper, we propose an implementation framework of Workflow-based Information Integration (WII) comprise four layers, namely, application layer, workflow layer, service layer, and message layer. In particular, our paper focuses on the workflow layer from the aspects of control-flows, data-flows and exception-flows by using the Business Process Execution Language for Web Services (BPEL4WS), extended with our proposed data-integration and exception-handling assertions. Each service provider provides Web services at the service layer and BPEL4WS orchestrates them together in order to achieve workflow-based information integration plans. The message layer comprises SOAP message specifications. We map information into SOAP messages and link the proposed exception-handling assertions in BPEL4WS to SOAP-fault implementations. Lastly, we demonstrate the feasibility of our approach with a practical health administrative information integration case study at the application layer and examine some typical use cases of exceptions.
We have demonstrated through example clinical scenarios, and results with our temporal reasoner Tachyon that temporal reasoning can be a valuable tool for managing and improving the workflow of business processes, particularly in healthcare. We have also identified areas where Tachyon can be extended to provide even more support for automated workflow.
Temporal reasoning is but one key component of our development plans to develop tools for automated workflow in healthcare. Our work will also make use of knowledge acquisition using graphical tools, resource logistics, simulation, and likns to EDI. These various capabilities must fit together within the workflow package.
Although tools for automated workflow tools are but one step in our ultimate vision for electronic commerce for virtual healthcare enterprises, a successfully implemented workflow environment is both a benchmark and a building block in that vision. It is a benchmark in that implemented workflow indicates that basic connectivity has been achieved. It is a building block in that implemented workflow allows an enterprise to monitor and improve its processes continually.
The aim of our Grid Computing team at Sun is to take Cluster and Grid computing onto the next level of widest acceptance.
For this purpose, we present a three-tier Grid architecture which relates to an intuitive model, including Cluster, Campus
and Global Grids, which allows users to embrace Grid Computing starting with their current compute clusters, and moving to
the next level of Grid implementation in an evolutionary way. In addition, we present a complete Grid software stack for all
three Grid stages, which contains modules developed at Sun and by our partners.