Task manifestation-based clinical protocol specification for ubiquitous healthcare services

Various approaches have been proposed for clinical protocol development, but few attentions have been paid to the ubiquitous healthcare services. This paper introduces a clinical protocol development methodology which is applicable to ubiquitous healthcare services. The methodology presents a systematic procedure which helps build up a protocol. It focuses on how to elucidate all participants´ role and tasks, and how to efficiently specify the workflow of tasks. The methodology employs the so-called 6W1H model to specify constituent tasks of a clinical protocol. It provides a Petri net-based visualization method which generates graphical workflow for a clinical protocol described by the 6W1H model. The proposed methodology has been successfully applied to specify a ubiquitous Overactive Bladder Syndrome (OAB) patient care service protocol.