Coordination of Inter-organisational Healthcare Processes via Specialisation of Internet-Based Object Life Cycles

We describe an approach to healthcare coordination using object life cycles (OLCs). By consulting the OLC of a given patient object instance, the legal methods to apply to that object at that time can be identified - acting as a resource for a clinical workstation accessing the Internet-based instance stored by the host of the inter-organisational hospital unformation system (HIS). To support coordination, each activity results in the posting of summary data to the HIS - handled generically as GEHR (Good Electronic Health Record) transaction archetypes. As well as providing predefined care plan templates, OLCs also allow flexibility and individualisation of care plans. Behaviour-consistent specialisation of OLCs permits the definition of valid variant OLCs. We illustrate the proposed concept in the context of a hospital Early Discharge Program (EDP) - currently driven by a hospital-based care coordinator. An HIS that supported the coordination would allow significant expansion of the program.

Index Terms: object life cycle, refinement, extension, behaviour-consistent specialisation, coordination, healthcare process, health information system (HIS), Good Electronic Health Record (GEHR)