Tender: »Javni razpis za spodbujanje raziskovalcev na začetku kariere, 2.0« published in 2016 by Ministry of education, science and sport, Republic of Slovenia.

Project was financed by:

• Ministry of education, science and sport, Republic of Slovenia (20%);
• EU’s Cohesion fund (80%), www.eu-skladi.si

Partners:

1. Jožef Stefan Institute

2. Private Company Better by Marand

Objectives

The project investigates two aspects of healthcare ecosystems. The technical one is focused on technologies that enable integration of different vendors’ healthcare applications, techniques that enable better security and data privacy, and also methods to identify requirements for the applications more efficiently. On the other hand, within the business aspect we conduct research on: identifying a model of success factors for healthcare ecosystem and a method for measuring impacts of healthcare applications on hospital processes. 

The research questions of the project:

• What is literature on modern healthcare system all about? [4]
• How to identify requirements for development of healthcare applications, which support hospital processes, more efficiently? [1, 5, 7]
• How to enable integration of healthcare applications? [3, 8]
• What are success factors for development of healthcare ecosystem? [4, 9]
• How to enable security and privacy of patient data? [2, 6]

Research activities

The project generated a close collaboration between IJS, company Better by Marand, and University Hospitals Plymouth NHS trust. In 2018 we collected and analysed data from a ward and hospital’s pharmacy in order to better understand patient discharge process before electronic prescribing application OPENeP implementation. We have presented preliminary results of the data collected on BEE conference [7], and wrote a paper where we simulated the period after the implementation [5].

In order to support OPENeP’s development team we delivered a paper where we came to conclusion that agile development with user stories is more effective when using business process models as contextual models [1].

Since data security and privacy of a healthcare application is a particularly sensitive topic, we delivered two publications addressing it, namely, [2] and [6], where different cryptographic algorithms were analysed.

Nowadays hospitals have multiple healthcare applications provided by different vendors. Effectiveness of hospital processes can be improved by integrating those applications by using open standards. Standard FHIR can help, however, there are many challenges on the way to safe integration. We discuss the challenges in papers [3] and [8].

A modern strategy of how to integrate applications involves openPlatforms and the ecosystems that they support. We have provided a literature review in conference paper [10]. The main idea of openPlatform is to keep clinical data away from applications. We have analysed Slovenian healthcare ecosystem, which is powered by Better Platform, in [9], and proposed a model of success factors that lead to mature healthcare ecosystem [4].

Project’s results / publications:

Journal papers:

[1] Marina Trkman, Jan Mendling, Peter Trkman, Marjan Krisper: Impact of the conceptual model’s format on identifying and understanding user stories. Information and softwere technology (SCI, A’), 2019. 

Status: Published (read the paper here).

[2] Samed Bajrić: Data security and privacy issues in healthcare. Applied Medical Informatics (SCI), 2020.

Status: Published (read the paper here).

[3] Marina Trkman, Božidarka Radović, Mitja Lapajne: Izzivi integracije zdravstvenih aplikacij: souporaba standardov openEHR in FHIR. Uporabna informatika.

Status (28.7.2020): In press.

[4] Marina Trkman, Samed Bajrić: A model of sucess factors of mature healthcare ecosystem.

Status (28.7.2020): Under review.

[5] Marina Trkman, Živa Stepančič, Roko Malkoč: A method for predicting impact of a healthcare application on hospital’s process: simulation.

Status (28.7.2020): Under review.

Conference papers and book chapters:

[6] Samed Bajrić: An Analysis of Cryptographic Algorithms in IoT in book An analysis of cryptographic algorithms in IoT, 2019

Status: Published (read the paper here).

[7] Marina Trkman, Živa Stepančič, Roko Malkoč: Evaluation of patients’ discharge time on a ward preliminary findings. BEE, 2019.

Status: Published (read the paper here).

[8] Marina Trkman, Božidarka Radović, Mitja Lapajne: Integracija informacijskih sistemov za e-zdravstvo: študija primera. DSI 2020.

Status (28.7.2020): In press.

[9] Marina Trkman, Samed Bajrić: What are success factors when building national healthcare ecosystem? MIPRO 2020.

Status (28.7.2020): In press.

[10] Marina Trkman: Citation network analyses of e-health

Status (28.7.2020): Rework required.