Information analytics for healthcare service discovery.

Lily Sun,Mohammed Alsaigh,Cleopa Mushi,Mohammad Yamin,Kecheng Liu,Fabian Chen

doi:10.1260/2040-2295.5.4.457

Abstract

The concept of being 'patient-centric' is a challenge to many existing healthcare service provision practices. This paper focuses on the issue of referrals, where multiple stakeholders, such as General Practitioners (GPs) and patients, are encouraged to make a consensual decision based on patients' needs. In this paper, we present an ontology-enabled healthcare service provision, which facilitates both patients and GPs in jointly deciding upon the referral decision. In the healthcare service provision model, we define three types of profiles which represent different stakeholders' requirements. This model also comprises a set of healthcare service discovery processes: articulating a service need, matching the need with the healthcare service offerings, and deciding on a best-fit service for acceptance. As a result, the healthcare service provision can carry out coherent analysis using personalised information and iterative processes that deal with requirements which change over time.

Highlights

There is an increasing pressure from the National Health Service (NHS), UK, on healthcare organisations, such as primary care and secondary care, to reduce operational costs and respond to rapid changes in patient expectations within healthcare service provision [1]
In order to improve the quality of healthcare service provision, we introduce a new ontology-enabled healthcare service provision method which is capable of:1) capturing the patients’ profiles which contain personal records including referral cases, the profile of healthcare service providers that describe a structure and environment of hospitals, and the profile of healthcare services that define medical and non-medical services provided by a hospital; 2) articulating a patient’s healthcare service needs and formulating a referral case in the patient profile; 3) discovering the healthcare services offered by the hospitals that match the requirements specified in the defined referral case; and 4) ranking the matching candidates if more than one possible service is found, and identifying a best-fit choice of healthcare service
The referral processes were executed and the referral choices were made by the patient and General Practitioners (GPs)

Summary

Introduction

There is an increasing pressure from the National Health Service (NHS), UK, on healthcare organisations, such as primary care and secondary care, to reduce operational costs and respond to rapid changes in patient expectations within healthcare service provision [1]. One of the changes is in relation to engaging patients with General Practitioners (GPs) from the primary care in the referral decision-making process. The patient can define their personal desires or preferences concerning which hospital they like to be referred to, and what health services they would like to experience. The referral process is informed by multiple types of knowledge, e.g., the national policy on healthcare services offered and their quality measured. The process will be checked against a set of service delivery criteria, e.g., that defined by SERVQUAL [2, 3, 4] and Care Quality Commission [5] for the healthcare services and for measuring these services. In order to facilitate both patients and GPs participation throughout the referral process, a mechanism is required that enables us to articulate and consolidate the referral requirements of all the stakeholders, leading to a joint referral decision

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Discussion

Conclusion