A medical guideline is a document describing in a more or less structured way the best practices (reasonings and actions) to diagnose and treat a definite pathology. It can be expressed as an unstructured document or following some standard such as XML GEM (Guideline Elements Model). Medical guidelines can be formalized into care paths. Currently, the border between guidelines and care path is blurred. For instance, GLIF (Guideline Interchange Format) can be processed by the Guideline Execution Engine, that acts as a workflow engine.
Published in Chapter:
Healthcare Information System Modelling
Jean-Luc Hainaut (University of Namur, Belgium), Anne-France Brogneaux (University of Namur, Belgium), and Anthony Cleve (University of Namur, Belgium)
Copyright: © 2013
|Pages: 20
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-4666-3990-4.ch028
Abstract
This chapter studies the requirements for a wide range of healthcare information systems, including, but not limited to, clinical pathways management, patient record management, home care management, and medical personnel and resource management. The analysis concentrates on the description and management of medical activities, leaving aside the standard management processes common to all enterprises. It develops a generic architecture for these information systems comprising four central submodels devoted to the description, respectively, of organizational structures, care processes, information, and resources. Each submodel is analysed independently of the others then integrated into a consistent global model. Extensions of this model to other facets of the healthcare information system are discussed and some practical applications are suggested.