1. Alerts for Healthcare Process and Data Integration
Dickson K.W. Chiu, Benny Kwok, Ray Wong Dept. of Computer Science & Engineering, Chinese University of Hong Kong
{bennykok2000,
S.C. Cheung
Dept. of Computer Science,
Hong Kong University of Science & Technology
Eleanna Kafeza
Department of Marketing and Communications, Athens University of Economics and Business
Marina Kafeza
Pepagni University Hospital of Iraklion and Medical School, University of Iraklion, Crete, Greece
Alerts for Healthcare

2. Introduction
Process integration and data integration are required among health service providers in healthcare chain workflow management
Practitioners, administrators, and patients are also involved
Large number of messages require timely communication
Alerts - urgent requests and critical messages
Alert Management System (AMS)
Routing, monitoring, and logging the alerts
Find suitable service - application specific considerations like costs, waiting time, service time
Alerts for Healthcare

3. Case Study – Medical House-call System
Both human and computerized systems involved
Different degree of computerization
Web Services supports both type of interaction in a single framework
Alerts for Healthcare

4. Overall Approach
Objective: robust, efficient, cost effective, simple, and user friendly AMS to improve the communications
detailed requirements were elicited and formulated into an alert conceptual model
sketched an overall system architecture
worked out the detailed mechanisms for each components of the system
alert management policies could be adapted to handle various situations
Prototyping with phases:
establish a computerized call center to manage all the alerts, replacing the current manual system
extend the system to connect to medical partners to form a service grid
include further intelligence into the system, e.g., advanced capability reasoning, scheduling with mobile location dependent information, service negotiation, integration with traffic routing
Alerts for Healthcare

5. Role of Alerts in Healthcare IS
Healthcare Information Systems and Workflows
Event /
Exception
Handling
Data/Process
Requirements
Alerts Managed by AMS
Web Services and Mobile Devices
What are Alerts?
Different from general events, alerts have more specific attributes, e.g., urgency and service requirements.
Different from exceptions, they need not relate to abnormal behaviors.
asynchronously received by external events / exceptions, incoming E-service requests
synchronously generated by internal E-service application.
handled by the AMS by requesting services:
internal information systems
human service provider
external E-service providers
Alerts for Healthcare

6. Alert Conceptual Model
Alerts for Healthcare

7. System Architecture
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8. Alert Life Cycle
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9. Sample alert acknowledgement user interface
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10. Alert Urgency Strategy Definition
Defining the policies according to which the urgencies of the alert will evolve
Example
Urgency002
Action
Urgent
default
Very Urgent
Submit a second alert to the same service provider, notifying about the approaching deadline
Critical
Redirect the alert to another SP that has the best response time
Very Critical
Send the alert to several SPs and accept the results of the one that response first, notify an administrator
Alerts for Healthcare

11. Service Provider Matchmaking
Algorithm searches for those service providers that can play the role required for the alert
Selects those that have a response time that is less than the deadline
If the matching is successful, one service provider is selected according to a user-supplied cost function
In case no matching is available, the algorithm upgrades the alert by expanding the roles whenever possible
Alerts for Healthcare

12. Workflow of the Call Center
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13. Example Workflow for Data Integration
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14. Evaluation by Medical Professionals
AMS Advantages
Make sure that an alert can reach the person who has to be notified
The inclusion of multiple mobile devices and platforms helps both the medical professions and the patients
The implementation of an urgency policy that uses concurrently multiple devices to communicate the alert can increase the probability to inform the person on time
An automated alert can make sure that the information is passed accurately and completely
Capability to choose the kind of received information, reception devices, and desired time slots
Infrastructure Benefits
Total solution healthcare chain workflow integration
Save much paper work and administration
guides call center operators to choose the right medical professionals to minimize possible specialty mismatch
Alerts for Healthcare

15. Conclusions
A conceptual model for specifying alerts based on the requirements of medical processes and a set of routing parameters
A practical architecture for the AMS based on contemporary Web Services – supports human and programmatic interfaces
An algorithm for matching service providers to alert requirements
A mechanism for (re-)routing alerts and increasing their urgency when alerts are not acknowledged or processed within deadline.
Applicability for a medical house-call system with prototyping and medical professional’s evaluation
Flexible and reusable AMS can be plug into other systems
Alerts for Healthcare

16. Future Work Healthcare process and data integration
Interfacing and platform-specific issues
Location dependent applications
Workforce management
Mobile CRM
Inter-relations among alerts.
Failure of commitments and their relation to contract enforcement
Impact of cancellations, other possible exceptions
Tradeoff between quality/response time and cost, and service negotiation
Alerts for Healthcare

17. Q&A
Thank you!
Alerts for Healthcare

18. Advantage of an AMS
The urgency requirements, associated interactions with service providers, and the monitoring required by the administrators can be systematically and modularly captured into an AMS, instead of scattering around in the main workflow specification.
The logic for sending, routing, and monitoring these alerts is supported in the AMS and can be heavily reused.
AMS evolves from the exception handling and user-interface mechanisms of our ME-ADOME WFMS, by factoring out and extending, in particular, urgency requirements.
Physical execution of individual tasks of regular processes is outside the scope of the AMS and is in capture in the application logic of individual information systems which can be a WFMS as well
An AMS is light-weight and highly coherent, but loosely coupled with other sub-systems, enabling it to be plugged into any information system that needs such services
Alerts for Healthcare