A web-based workflow system for emergency healthcare.

Abstract

Emergency healthcare delivery involves a variety of activities performed from the time of a call to the ambulance service till the time of patient's disposal from the emergency department of a hospital. Workflow systems have recently received considerable attention in the healthcare field since they overcome organizational structures and support collaboration and coordination requirements by automatically routing relevant information where and when needed. In particular, healthcare workflow systems implemented over the Web can form the basis for a collaborative environment by bringing together healthcare professionals who are geographically dispersed and, hence, creating virtual healthcare workgroups organized around patient care. In this paper, a web-based workflow system is presented that was developed to support emergency healthcare processes and to provide an infrastructure for the integration of pre-hospital and in-hospital emergency healthcare.