Doctors, Patients, and Service Providers: A cloud-based approach for managing healthcare processes

The ability of an eHealth system to empower and support doctors in undertaking healthcare processes and adapting them to the specific needs of their patien ts is key for its success. In this paper, we present a cloud-base d approach for this type of eHealth systems, and consequently encourage their proliferation. First, we discuss a new health care business model that emancipates doctors from their reliance on technical assistance, and facilitates their coopera tion with healthcare service providers. Then, we introduce a conceptual model of healthcare processes that allows doctors t o understand, program, and upkeep them easily. We illustrate how both these components constitute a basis for cl oud-based eHealth systems by discussing the development of a prototype implementation. Finally, we show how the prototype can be integrated in existing workflows by discussing a co ntextual analysis conducted to guide this integration. We co nclude by discussing our results. Keywords-eHealth; Business Process Management; Cloud Computing