Resilient Software Architecture Platform for the Individual Care Plan

Resilient Software Architecture Platform for the Individual Care Plan

David José Murteira Mendes, Manuel José Lopes, José Manuel García-Alonso, Jorge Santos, Luís Manuel Mota Sousa
Copyright: © 2020 |Pages: 20
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-7998-1937-0.ch002
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Abstract

The individual care plan (ICP) is a metamorphic being. The only steady reality that it maintains is its final objective, stated and explained in the previous chapter where the ICP is thoroughly introduced and debated. It is a fantastic beast, better described as a system of systems that is severely polymorphic due to its coverage both in level of care as well as sources of data to handle. Patient monitoring generates large volumes of data. There is the evident need of an advanced approach that can deal with these huge amounts of healthcare data extracted from various sources such as the wearable sensors, medical, and nursing records that are currently called big data. The purpose of this chapter is to introduce and discuss the software platform that is adequate to develop and deploy the system paying attention to the needs of high-availability, sensitive information security; service-level agreements for multiple healthcare interoperability; law and ruling conformance; as well as other technical and ethical aspects.
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Introduction

In the previous chapter we introduced our concept of an innovative model of care that maintains a double time series of the care needs history and provided actions as well as the clinical antecedents in a care contract that enables the communication among all the levels involved. The ICT framework architecture able support the ICP (integrated Care Plan), defined in the previous chapter, is described in this one at its different levels. We try an approach using subsequent refinements from more general to more detailed explanations and diagrams to fully cover the proposal. When appropriate, we present several types of diagrams to better illustrate the ideas. Our proposal, at the end, is based in specific POSS1 technologies that are proven both effective globally in technology as well as the less costly to maintain.

Methodology

Resilient Software Platform Reference Architecture

In a complex system of systems like this one, the responsibility of leading and coordinating the technical activities and artifacts development rests is a software architect’s shoulders.

Figure 1.

Software architect responsibilities

978-1-7998-1937-0.ch002.f01

Although the different artifacts shown in the Figure 1 are all heavily dependent of each other, we stress the focus in this article to present and discuss the software architecture, it will be used as the foundation for the platform’s software architecture document. All of the features discussed arise from the user requisites for the system that will function as a helping tool for all the healthcare ecosystem that involves the actors presented in the section 1.3.1. The requisites conform the system that has to be deployed in a advanced architecture that has to be already proven in the field. There is no space for relying upon futuristic novel concepts because the system of systems has no room for failure. These possible advances are presented in section 5 - Future Developments.

The proposed architecture relies in a highly resilient structure with no single point of failure and several failover redundancies all using POSS projects.

The C4 Model for Visualizing Software Architecture

Software architecture diagrams are a fantastic way to communicate how a complex software system is built. The C4 software architecture model was invented by Simon Brown (Brown, 2018) and we strongly support and use it for the sake of communicating the architectural concepts and implementation options about the ICP. The C4 model consists of a hierarchical set of software architecture diagrams for context, containers, components, and code. The hierarchy of the C4 diagrams provides different levels of abstraction, each of which is relevant to a different audience. Hence, we get a multi audience approach when trying to disseminate the ICP concept.

The Individual Care Plan architecture proposal

According to the refinement proposal induced by the C4 system the overall concept is introduced by contextualizing the interaction between the care provider and the ICP

Context

Figure 2.

ICP Context

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Actors in their Context

Introduced in the previous ICP article, the elderly care provider actors are heterogenous regarding their health and care literacy and responsibilities. A matrix can be formed to position the different stakeholders against each other and relating to the cost of activation.

Table 1.
­
Care providerCare levelCare-literacyActivation cost
DoctorTertiary/secondaryHighHigh
NurseTertiary/secondary/primaryHighHigh
Formal carerPrimary/continued/nursing homeHigh/MediumMedium
Informal carerHomeMedium/LowLow
Self-careHomeUnknownLow/none

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