Abstract
Healthcare applications involve complex structures of interacting processes and professionals that need to exchange information to provide the care services. In this kind of system, many different professional competencies, ethical and sensibility requirements, as well as legal frameworks coexist, and because of that, the information managed inside the system should not be freely accessed. On the contrary, it must be subject to very complex privacy restrictions. In the chapter, the authors describe a case study of a knowledge-based distributed system, the fundamental issues that must be considered in design of a distributed healthcare application. The K4CARE system is an example of an application to the medical domain of homecare assistance. Homecare involves professionals from different institutions (hospital, social workers, etc.) that must interact around any particular patient, and which used to be located in different physical places having their own and independent information systems.
TopKnowledge-Based Home Care E-Services
The care of chronically ill patients involves lifelong treatment under continuous expert supervision. Admission to hospital and residential facilities can be unnecessary and even counterproductive, and could saturate national health services and increase health care costs.
K4Care Platform is a software system providing Knowledge-Based HomeCare eServices. It is a response to the needs of the increasing number of senior population requiring a personalized HomeCare (HC) assistance. The system integrates knowledge and skills of specialized centres and professionals of several EU countries. The knowledge and skills are incorporated in an intelligent Web platform in order to provide e-services to health professionals, patients, and citizens in general. It offers a unique solution that integrates features of a healthcare information system with a decision support system and works in highly distributed environment.
The K4Care platform serves a broad range of HC providers such as local health units integrated with social services of municipalities, specialized HC centres, other organizations of care or social support as well as specialized care (e.g. rehabilitation, oncology, etc.).
K4Care provides medical doctors with following functions:
- •
Creating record of a new patient.
- •
Storage and retrieval of patient records using defined selection criteria (e.g. recently examined patients, greatest interval from the last visit, the same diagnosis, etc.).
- •
Inspection of formal intervention plans (developed from medical guidelines), the right to develop new formal intervention plans have only some qualified users.
- •
Development of individual intervention plan (IIP) for each patient based on his/her diagnosis (or combination of diagnoses) and previous treatment. These plans are successively stored in the patient record.
Other care givers are provided with relevant data and information about the patients and are allowed to insert data specified in medical doctors´ requests.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Ontology: High-level knowledge and data representation structure. Ontologies provide a formal frame to represent the knowledge related with a complex domain, as a qualitative model of the system. Ontologies can be used to represent the structure of a domain by means of defining concepts and properties that relate them.
Decision Support System: A computer-based information system that supports decision-making activities in a specified problem domain utilizing domain knowledge, raw data, documents, and usually personal knowledge. Decision support systems include knowledge-based systems.
Decision Support System: A computer-based information system that supports decision-making activities in a specified problem domain utilizing domain knowledge, raw data, documents, and usually personal knowledge. Decision support systems include knowledge-based systems.
Information Security: Information security must protect information throughout the life span of the information, from the initial creation of the information on through to the final disposal of the information. The information must be protected permanently, i.e. either when stored in a file or being just processed or transmitted.
Multi-Agent System: A system composed of multiple interacting intelligent agents. Multi-agent systems can be used to solve problems that are difficult or impossible for an individual agent or a monolithic system to solve.
Multi-Agent System: A system composed of multiple interacting intelligent agents. Multi-agent systems can be used to solve problems that are difficult or impossible for an individual agent or a monolithic system to solve.
Electronic Health Record: Systematic collection of electronic health information about individual patients; it is a record in digital format that is capable of being shared across different health care settings.
Medical Guidelines: Document with the aim of guiding decisions and criteria regarding diagnosis, management, and treatment in specific areas of health care.
Electronic Health Record: Systematic collection of electronic health information about individual patients; it is a record in digital format that is capable of being shared across different health care settings.
Information Security: Information security must protect information throughout the life span of the information, from the initial creation of the information on through to the final disposal of the information. The information must be protected permanently, i.e. either when stored in a file or being just processed or transmitted.
Medical Guidelines: Document with the aim of guiding decisions and criteria regarding diagnosis, management, and treatment in specific areas of health care.
Home Care: Health care or supportive care provided by health care professionals at patient homes.
Home Care: Health care or supportive care provided by health care professionals at patient homes.
Ontology: High-level knowledge and data representation structure. Ontologies provide a formal frame to represent the knowledge related with a complex domain, as a qualitative model of the system. Ontologies can be used to represent the structure of a domain by means of defining concepts and properties that relate them.