Invited Keynote at the IEEE International Conference on Healthcare Informatics 2014 (ICHI 2014);

Manfred Reichert, Verona, Italy, September 15-17, 2014

Healthcare organizations are facing the challenge of delivering high quality services to their patients at affordable costs. These challenges become even more prominent with the growth in the aging population with chronic diseases and the rise of healthcare costs. High degree of specialization of medical disciplines, huge amounts of medical knowledge and patient data to be consulted in order to provide evidence-based re­commendations, and the need for personalized healthcare are prevalent trends in this information-intensive domain. The emerging situation necessitates computer-based, mobile support of healthcare process management as well as clinical decision-making.

Business process management (BPM) technology provides a key to implement these changes. Though patient-centered process support and m-health become increasingly crucial in healthcare, BPM technology has not been broadly used in healthcare environments yet. One reason for this drawback has been the rigidity introduced by traditional process-centric healthcare information systems. In particular, the latter will be not accepted by medical staff if their use in exceptional situations is more cumbersome and time-consuming than just handling the exception with a phone call to the right person.  This keynote presentation reflects on recent developments from the BPM domain, which aim at a high degree of process support, flexibility, traceability, and mobility. These key features will be illustrated along existing BPM frameworks. Altogether, emerging BPM methods, concepts and technologies will contribute to further enhance IT support for healthcare processes.

http://ichi2014.di.univr.it/