Four-level process modeling in healthcare SOA analysis and design.

Process and activity modeling are widely used in healthcare work and systems development projects. There are various approaches and abstractions available for process modeling. This study describes a four-level approach to activity and process modeling which has been used in modeling healthcare activities in relation to the specification of service-oriented information systems solutions. Based on the material and experience from these efforts: 1) overview level descriptions are well capable of illustrating the domain of the development, 2) many current notations and techniques on process level fail to describe diverse practices in healthcare, 3) descriptions on activity level should be generalized and combined in novel ways to achieve reuse and to support complex domains, 4) very accurate and detailed action-level modeling should be used cautiously to reduce unnecessary workload and to focus on the essential features of the solutions.

Model-centric approaches for the development of health information systems.

Modeling is used increasingly in healthcare to increase shared knowledge, to improve the processes, and to document the requirements of the solutions related to health information systems (HIS). There are numerous modeling approaches which aim to support these aims, but a careful assessment of their strengths, weaknesses and deficiencies is needed. In this paper, we compare three model-centric approaches in the context of HIS development: the Model-Driven Architecture, Business Process Modeling with BPMN and BPEL and the HL7 Development Framework. The comparison reveals that all these approaches are viable candidates for the development of HIS. However, they have distinct strengths and abstraction levels, they require local and project-specific adaptation and offer varying levels of automation. In addition, illustration of the solutions to the end users must be improved.