The research aim underpinning the
Healthcare@Home (HH) information system described here was to enable ‘near real time’ risk analysis for disease early detection and prevention.
To this end, we are implementing a family of prototype web services to ‘push’ or ‘pull’ individual’s health-related data
via an system of clinical hubs, mobile communication devices and/or dedicated home-based network computers. We are examining
more efficient methods for ethical use of such data in timeline-based (i.e. ‘longitudinal’) data analysis systems. A consistent
data collation infrastructure is being created for use along the ‘patient path’—accessible wherever patients happen to be.
This ‘patient-centred’ infrastructure can be applied in the evaluation of disease progression risk (in the light of clinical
understanding of disease processes). In this paper we describe the requirements for making multi-data trend management ‘scale-up’,
together with some requirements of an ‘end-to-end’ functioning data collection system. A Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA)
approach is used to maximise benefits from (1) clinical evidence and (2) computational models of disease progression that
can be made available elsewhere on the SOA. We discuss the implications of this so-called ‘closed loop’ approach for improving
healthcare intervention outcomes, patient safety, decision support, objective measurement of service quality and in providing
inputs for quantitative healthcare (predictive) modelling.
Keywords Web services - Time series analysis routines - Scalability - Chronic disease management - Portal technologies - Risk monitoring - Service-oriented architecture
To aid understanding, a concise glossary is provided for italicized technical or common ‘jargon’ terms that are not defined
in the text.