Modelling methodology for hospital systems: application to an emergency department

This paper deals with hospital system modelling. The aim is to propose an object-oriented modelling methodology. The first step of this methodology consists in a domain analysis for hospital systems allowing one to register the set of problems and to define the objectives in order to determine a hospital system class. The second step concerns the recording of all the different entities composing the domain studied, in order to obtain a generic knowledge model. In the third step, the authors propose tools allowing, for a particular system, the description of activities, physical means and working rules in order to specify the system functioning. Finally the authors describe an application of this modelling methodology to the emergency and X-ray departments of Bastia General Hospital