Year

2010

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Department

University of Wollongong. School of Information Systems and Technology

Abstract

This research proposes a dynamic recompilation platform for a workflow management system to manage a hospital ward. Literature review has shown that ward management in hospitals and nursing care processes are complicated and it is not easy to design and develop a ward management system that is easy to use and one that suits requirements of any ward due to the complex nature of the hospital environment. A workflow management system that can be customised and recompiled is desired due to the dynamic nature of the nursing care process. This research investigates the feasibility of using web service technology to develop a workflow management system that enables a nursing supervisor to customise their work requirements using a dynamic recompilation technique. The two main features of the proposed system are customisation and dynamic recompilation. Customisation allows users to modify functions within the web service repository to suit individual tasks based on their work profile and situations, whereas dynamic recompilation allows multiple web service repositories to be recompiled and arranged into a new set of dynamic functional services when task assignment changes. This research proposes a framework of ward workflow management system using web services technology. We called the proposed system the dynamic platform for workflow management system (DPWFM) consisting of four web service repositories that include work profile service (WPS), function service (FS), function allocation service (FAS) and recompilation service (RS). There are three perspectives to the DPWFM: organisational, functional and procedural. The organisational aspect of the WPS defines the organisational roles of individual nurses in the hospital, the functional aspect of the FS describes tasks, activities and services to be performed and the procedural aspect of the FAS describes the allocation and assignment of tasks. The recompilation aspect of the DPWFM is the RS that dynamically recompiles the function services using inputs from the WPS, FS and FAS to create an agenda workflow in the form of scheduled tasks to help nurses in organising and performing the assigned tasks. We will present a scenario to show how the dynamic recompilation of the DPWFM can be applied in a ward. The architecture of the proposed system consisting of three architectural layers of presentation, business logic and data layers will also be presented. The contribution of this research is the development of an innovative approach of using web services technology to manage workflow in the hospital ward.

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Unless otherwise indicated, the views expressed in this thesis are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the University of Wollongong.