A Comprehensive Framework for the Representation and Processing of Dynamic Healthcare Workflow

Dominic Covvey, FACMI, FHIMSS
Professor, Department of Biology and School of Optometry
Founding Director, Waterloo Institute for Health Informatics Research
University of Waterloo

>September 12, 2007
12:00 PM - 1:30 PM
Davis Centre 1304, University of Waterloo

View Video of Presentation in HI Alive Archive: Research Seminars Archive 2007-2008

Abstract
Healthcare processes are dynamic: there are many decision makers (e.g., the patient, the family, the physician, and others), decisions, and events that constantly revise the course of action, sometimes giving an almost chaotic appearance to the process of care. Departmental procedures and clinical protocols attempt to regularize workflow, but the needs of care, the great variety of situations and individuals, and the exigencies of the moment (such as equipment failure) frustrate attempts at regularization and result in deviation from or abandonment of protocols with the complaint that they are attempts at “cookbook medicine” with little or no value. This work embraces the reality of the complexity and variability of healthcare processes and re-conceptualizes workflow as a dynamic process that occurs in the human context. Its purpose is to release us from the bonds of classic flowcharting and to arrive at a way of representing workflow that is congruent with the true nature of human-machine processes.

About the Speaker
Dominic Covvey is a Professor and the Founding Director of the Waterloo Institute for Health Informatics Research at the University of Waterloo. His research is in the representation and analysis of healthcare workflow, the definition of competencies and curricula in Health Informatics and the design of the Electronic Health Record. Dominic is a Fellow of the American College of Medical Informatics and of the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society, a senior member of the IEEE, and a certified Information Systems Professional.