Conceptual Modeling of the Healthcare Ecosystem (2011)
This article proposes a conceptual model for the Digital Healthcare Ecosystem (DHE), starting from two complementary perspectives: a patient-centric view and a view of the care process as an organizational process. The goal is to reduce the semantic gap between the modeling of healthcare systems and their implementation, by introducing a more natural and expressive conceptual framework.
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Bibliographic data
Title: Conceptual Modeling of the Healthcare Ecosystem
Authors: Luca Dan Șerbănați, Andrei Văsilățeanu
Year: 2011
Event: MIE 2011 – Medical Informatics Europe
Theme: Digital Healthcare Ecosystem, conceptual model, digitalization, avatar, virtualization
The article proposes a unifying conceptual model for healthcare systems, integrating concepts from HL7 and European care continuity initiatives, but surpassing them through an approach inspired by the digital ecosystems paradigm.
Figure from the article
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Fig. 1 – the relationship between the real and virtual worlds within the Digital Healthcare Ecosystem.
Conceptual contribution
The article explicitly introduces the concept of Digital Healthcare Ecosystem, inspired by the digital ecosystems paradigm, in which actors are represented as avatars, and applications and devices as digital species.
Also, the formulation of the digital health state concept appears for the first time, as an imperfect but evolving reflection of the patient's real health status.
The article establishes a common vocabulary for healthcare processes, organizations, and data models, reducing the gap between modeling and implementation.
Comprehensive description
1. The need for a new model
The authors start from the idea that current healthcare systems are modeled insufficiently expressively. A model is needed that more faithfully reflects the complexity of real processes and reduces the gap between model and implementation.
2. Two complementary perspectives
The proposed model integrates two perspectives: a patient-centric one, which tracks the longitudinal evolution of the health status, and a process-centric one, which views the healthcare system as a set of interconnected organizational activities.
3. Digital Health State
The digital health state concept is defined as a digital reflection of the real health status. This representation is incomplete and imperfect, but it can be improved through the continuous accumulation of observations.
4. The digital ecosystem
DHE is described as a self-organizing digital infrastructure, in which actors are represented by avatars, and applications and devices by digital species. These interact, evolve, and recombine, generating new services.
5. The real–virtual relationship
A central concept is the interaction between the real and virtual worlds. Clinical events in the real world modify the digital state, and the reactions of the digital system, in turn, influence the real processes.
6. Dynamic teams and emergent processes
The system allows the dynamic formation of multidisciplinary teams, generated by the patient's needs. These teams are the result of the interaction of avatars and processes in the ecosystem.
7. A common vocabulary
The article proposes a unifying vocabulary for processes, organizations, and data, facilitating semantic interoperability and software component reuse.
8. Conceptual impact
The proposed model paves the way for deeper integration between systems, the emergence of new services, and a healthcare system evolution inspired by the dynamics of natural ecosystems.
Links
Back to the concept: Digital Healthcare Ecosystem