title: Using enterprise ontology for improving emergency management in hospitals.
abstract: In a competitive world, healthcare organizations are forced to make improvements in order to compete and prosper. Healthcare services suffer from lack of change and inefficiency, which affects the delivery of sustainable services. We propose a method based on DEMO to find non value-added transactions that must be redesigned to simplify processes. This methodology was chosen as a basis for our solution because it provides a better understanding of the dynamics of an organization, has a strong and well-formed theory, and allows a good alignment between the enterprise design and operation. A demonstration of the method was accomplished in an emergency department, making it possible to find transactions that can be improved or automated. To evaluate the results we used interviews, Moody and Shanks Quality Framework, and the Four Principles from Österle et al., which shows that the method yields an adequate and clear process view and is reliable when it comes to improving healthcare operational processes.
authors.affiliation: Instituto Superior Técnico, Technical University of Lisbon, Portugal. david.n.dias@ist.utl.pt
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Galego Dias
authors.forename: Luís Velez
authors.initials: LV
authors.lastname: Lapão
authors.forename: Miguel Mira
authors.initials: MM
authors.lastname: da Silva
mesh_terms: D017598:Efficiency, Organizational; D004636:Emergency Service, Hospital / Q000458:organization & administration*; D006739:Hospital Administration / Q000379:methods*; D017146:Models, Organizational; D011174:Portugal; D058996:Quality Improvement / Q000458:organization & administration*