Endocrine Abstracts

Background and Aims:
Over the next decade, the projected epidemic of Diabetes, their subsequent treatment requirements and complication management will emerge as a major threat to future public health. There are always demands for greater efficiency and cost-effectiveness within healthcare service especially in the bigger scale population study. Our aim is to develop a computerized system to facilitate diagnosis of Diabetes mellitus through co-ordination of multiple healthcare providers and information systems.
Materials and Methods
We use UML (Unified Modeling Language) which is the industry-standard language for specifying and documenting formal representation model for clinical guidelines. We translated WHO Guidelines for the Diagnosis of Diabetes Mellitus, into a rule base for a clinical workflow engine. The workflow application is used in the diagnostic process of diabetes mellitus, in scheduling follow up, and facilitates report generating according to local clinical guidelines. The application then connected to multiple distributed databases with interface engine and feeder systems.
Results and Conclusions
It is difficult to integrate the current workflow into the existing computing and information system infrastructure without a major re-engineering of current practices and systems. Another significant challenge is to translate the entire clinical processes into a computerized model. The complex nature of the healthcare processes and the adaptability required of the workflow engines to integrate within the healthcare computing and information infrastructure; represent major research challenges. Further research tasks to be addressed are to develop a framework of generic event-based components to support adaptable workflow management in clinical care; to develop a set of authoring and presentation tools for clinical guidelines/protocols and associated workflow activities and to use workflow to monitor the quality of the care delivered and provide feedback to optimize the modeling and simulation tools and to update the clinical guidelines. All of these are very useful tools to provide a more cost-effective and realistic screening program on a bigger scale.