Abstract
Healthcare is characterized by a highly complex environment where the process of patient care requires an unusual amount of communication between different healthcare professionals (HCPs). For a better patient care, the various HCPs have to cooperate, a processed often called shared care (Garde & Knaup, 2006; Schabetsberger, Ammenwerth, Andreatta, Gratl, Haux, & Lechleitner, 2006). Nowadays, there is an increasing incorporation of a heterogeneous set of Information Systems (ISs)—paper-based and computer-based—on the daily work of HCPs, in order to retrieve information about patients (Coiera, 2003; Van-Bemmel & Musen, 1997). The complexity of the patient care process combined with the heterogeneity of the information resources leads to a paradigm of data redundancy in the healthcare services in general, and hemophilia care in particular.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Modeling Process: Definition of the details of a business process flow, modeling all the data, and other relevant elements.
Web-Based Information System: Information System that is accessed with a Web browser over a network such as the Internet or an intranet.
Requirement Engineering: Systematic requirement analysis.
Software Engineering: Application of a systematic, disciplined, quantifiable approach to the development of Information Systems/Software.
Unified Modeling Language (UML): A standardized specification language for object modeling that includes a graphical notation used for visualizing, specifying, constructing, and documenting the artifacts of a system.
Shared Care: Continuous, patient-oriented cooperation of hospitals, general practitioners, specialists, and other healthcare professionals (HCPs) during patient care.
Requirement Analysis: All tasks that go into determining the requirements of a new or altered system, taking in account users’ needs.
Home Therapy: Process where the hemophilic patients receive treatment with coagulation-factor concentrates in their homes.
Grounded theory: Research method most often associated with the social sciences.
Healthcare Actors: Individual or group with an interest in the healthcare system, including patients and their families, nurses, physicians, laboratorial technical staff, and other external entities as regulators, insurance companies, and healthcare organizations.