Discrete Event System Specification Framework for Self-Improving Healthcare Service Systems

Abstract

A healthcare service system (HSS) is made of humans and technology where for the foreseeable future, self-improvement will be primarily based on human understanding rather than machine learning. Therefore, for such a system to continually self-improve, it must provide the right data and models to support human decisions on selection of alternatives likely to improve the quality of its services. Our focus in this paper is to show how modeling and simulation (M&S) can help design service infrastructures that introduce coordination and bring into play the conditions for learning and continuous improvement. To do this, we discuss the application of the discrete event system specification (DEVS) formalism within system of systems engineering (SoSE) to develop coordination models for transactions that involve multiple disparate activities of component systems and that need to be selectively sequenced to implement patient-centered coordinated care interventions. We show how such coordination concepts provide a layer to support a proposed information technology for continuous improvement of healthcare as a learning collaborative system of systems (SoS).