Dynamic business processes and virtual communities in wireless ehealth environments

Abstract

Computer Supported Collaborative Work (CSCW) related applications tend to be a trend for most successful businesses, organizations and domains nowadays, as is the Healthcare sector. Healthcare specialists often work in remote areas facing many problems and challenges driven mainly from the limitations and constraints of the mobile and wireless technologies in relation to the tasks at hand. Due to the sensitive area of healthcare provision, this chapter discusses that additional features need to be incorporated in current CSCW systems, like the dynamic creation of medical virtual teams, dynamic workflows and the automatic triggered events upon time expiration, in order to be more effective and efficient. In this respect and having in mind the new Web 2.0 characteristics, a set of new features applied in our proposed CSCW system, DITIS, is analyzed in an attempt to encapsulate all the needs of eHealth applications. Furthermore, an extensive evaluation of the system is presented, supporting the need for such enhancements since a significant increase in communication, coordination and collaboration has been shown among the subjects. © 2010, IGI Global.