Modeling and Automated Examination of Communication Processes in Integrated Health Information Systems: A Systematic Approach

Modern, integrated information and communication systems (ICT) help improve the communication along processes in hospitals. The goal of this paper is to present a reusable and holistic concept which allows the detailed and systematic description of arbitrary communication processes, as well as the detection of communication errors. This is realized by mapping attributes of communication processes to an entity relationship model respectively database and applying specific, predefined queries on the stored process attributes and their relationships, resulting in the detection of potential communication errors. To develop the authors’ concept, they used a methodological approach which was inspired by the concept of Rapid Application Development and adapted in order to develop their model. Furthermore, techniques of qualitative content analysis, as well as expert interviews, were used to develop the authors’ approach. The components of their approach have been successfully evaluated with different communication processes and they were able to detect major potential communication errors. To fully proof the authors’ concept, further tests with complex communication processes are indicated. Tool-support is on a prototype-level and needs further improvement towards standardization and usability. To transfer their concept from scientific use to daily operation, it is also necessary to further analyze and coordinate the concept with existing approaches from the domain such as business process modeling etc.