Abstract

In the current arena, rapid changes are required to address dynamic patient’s treatment process needs according to the patient’s demand in the healthcare sector. This research work addresses existing problems about information flow in ward-round, what is the optimal information need for an individual with his/her competences according to their role during ward-round in healthcare area. This work also mentions what are the certain activities which are required during the patient treatment.

This research work contributes in the field of Information logistics and ontology development in healthcare. So the main purpose of this thesis is to design an ontology based model that can fix information flow problems in the ward-round process of hospital unit. The ontology based model can be used to provide relevant information to the domain users according to their needs and demands. The ontology based model projects domain users profiling and describes their roles, information demands with competencies: skills, qualifications and experiences. The ontology based model will be implemented in OWL language that can be used in an application to support ward-round activities for achieving effective patient’s treatment process.  

For ontology development is concerned, different ontology development methodologies have been reviewed from literature review by the author to analyze the existing problems in the ward-round. This thesis incorporates Hybrid Methodology (HM) that helps to develop ontology based model that addresses information flow problems in ward-round. The proposed ontology based model is developed in web Ontology Language (OWL) supported tool protégé 4.0.2 that can be considered as foundation to develop a software product with the help of IT practitioners and developers to fulfill medical practitioner’s demands in ward-round’s context.