Prof. Dr. Manfred Reichert was invited speaker in the extracurricular studies of the University of Ulm in February 2010. In his lecture he gave insights into fundamental challenges and perspectives of IT-supported healthcare processes. This topic aroused a great deal of interest already prior to the lecture, and Prof. Reichert was invited for an interview in the news magazine of SWR4 Schwabenradio.

Background:

Healthcare processes require the cooperation of different organizational units and medical disciplines. In such an environment optimal process support becomes crucial. Though healthcare processes frequently change, and therefore the separation of the flow logic from the application code seems to be promising, workflow technology has not yet been broadly used in healthcare environments.

Presentation:

In his talk Prof. Reichert elaborated both the potential and the essential limitations of IT support for healthcare processes. He identified different levels of process support in healthcare, and distinguished between organizational processes and the medical treatment process. To recognize the limitations of IT support he adopted a broad socio-technical perspective based on scientific literature and personal experience. Despite of the limitations he had identified, undeniably, IT has a huge potential to improve healthcare quality which has not been explored by current IT solutions. In particular, he indicated how process management technology can improve IT support for healthcare processes. In the last part of his presentation, Prof. Reichert gave insights into the challenges and perspectives emerging with the increasing availability of mobile medical devices and mobile healthcare processes.