Using Business Ontology to Integrate Business Architecture and Business Process Management for Healthcare Modeling

Author(s):  
Bonnie S Urquhart ◽  
Waqar Haque

Patient safety and quality of health care services continue to be an issue within healthcare organizations. Quality improvement of healthcare processes at a systems level requires a shared language so the system is well understood across and between business areas. Business ontology provides the ability to create a shared language which can be used to integrate business process management (BPM) and business architecture (BA) concepts to identify, prioritize, and plan system wide improvement. The effective application of this comprehensive management approach has been demonstrated using medication management services within a publicly funded Canadian healthcare organization. This article illustrates how the foundational ontology developed by the Global University Alliance and the related Business Process Management Ontology (BPMO) can be used to facilitate the integration of BA and BPM concepts to improve quality of medication management. The development of business artefacts resulted in a prioritized list of improvement initiatives and an action plan to implement and monitor the initiatives. The integration of BPM and BA using an ontology in a healthcare setting yields improved services at the systems level.

Author(s):  
Fernando Belfo

Computer games conceptualization and development are processes that have particular features with significant complexity. The life cycle at computer games development should attend the dynamism, the challenge and the opportunities of the game market. Business process management (BPM) pretends to give an alternative perspective of management to the departmental and hierarchical one. Game firm’s business should be seen with an integrated attitude, incentivising employees from different departments to work together in the same process with a common mission and persecuting same objectives. The importance of integrating the strategic level plans and the task level deployment is crucial for increased alignment and so, organizational performance. This can be better done if there is a process strategy definition, which links strategic initiatives with all needs of a process infrastructure. The processes´ standardizing tendency opens the chance to outsource parts of them bringing possible benefits to game firm and customers. The definition of a clear framework at the strategic level allows lower processes description and global business process architecture specification. Other important aspects of business process management approach at computer games industry should include ownership clarification, performance measurement mechanisms and obviously the identification and activation of improvement opportunities. Author elects business processes customization, integration of flows between firm and its supply chain partners and superior user interfaces using specialized workflow tools as being three improvement opportunities at games industry. In addition to those components, three additional extra concepts are considered critical to have a complete understanding of BPM. They are the conscious process management, the macro process management and the centrality of process. This chapter is going to follow these vectors in order to understand possible opportunities powered by BPM to gain competitive advantages in computer game industry.


2020 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Behjat Zuhaira ◽  
Naveed Ahmad

PurposeSignificant numbers of business process management (BPM) projects fail. Their failure is attributed toward many factors. Among them, low quality of BPM is one reason. Some of the tasks in BPM have their roots in business process reengineering (BPR). The literature has cited many different critical success and failure factors for quality BPM and BPR. Lack of software tools is one of the technology-oriented factors that results in poor BPM and BPR. This paper aims to build a generic feature set offered by software tools for process modeling their analysis implementation and management. It presents an objective analysis in identifying weaknesses and strengths of these tools, primarily for BPM.Design/methodology/approachA method is proposed to evaluate the quality of process reengineering and management delivered by software tools. It consists of four phases: feature extraction, tool selection, data extraction and tool evaluation.FindingsThe data gathered is quantified to test research hypotheses, the results are statistically significant and highlight multiple areas for future improvements. Moreover, the cluster visualizations created also help to understand the strengths and weaknesses of BPM/BPR tools.Research limitations/implicationsDespite the research approach used, there is a chance of subjectivity when it comes to evaluating different tools.Practical implicationsThe paper includes implications for practitioners and researchers for choosing appropriate software tool for process modeling, analysis, implementation and management, matching their requirements with BPM and BPR. It also identifies features that are missing in these tools.Originality/valueThis paper provides a comprehensive analysis of BPM and supporting tools, relates them to key stages of BPM life cycle and BPR methodologies. It also identifies various areas for further development in these tools.


2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 1305-1320 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alberto De Ramón Fernández ◽  
Daniel Ruiz Fernández ◽  
Yolanda Sabuco García

Business Process Management is a new strategy for process management that is having a major impact today. Mainly, its use is focused on the industrial, services, and business sector. However, in recent years, it has begun to apply for optimizing clinical processes. So far, no studies that evaluate its true impact on the healthcare sector have been found. This systematic review aims to assess the results of the application of Business Process Management methodology on clinical processes, analyzing whether it can become a useful tool to improve the effectiveness and quality of processes. We conducted a systematic literature review using ScienceDirect, Web of Science, Scopus, PubMed, and Springer databases. After the electronic search process in different databases, 18 articles met the pre-established requirements. The findings support the use of Business Process Management as an effective methodology to optimize clinical processes. Business Process Management has proven to be a feasible and useful methodology to design and optimize clinical processes, as well as to automate tasks. However, a more comprehensive follow-up of this methodology, better technological support, and greater involvement of all the clinical staff are factors that play a key role for the development of its true potential.


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