APPLYING UML TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF MEDICAL CARE PROCESS MANAGEMENT SYSTEM FOR NURSING HOME RESIDENTS
Yeh‐Chun Juan, Chi Him Eddie Ma, Huang-Mu Chen · 2005
Taiwan has been recognized by World Health Organization (WHO) as an “elderly ” country in 1993 since its elderly (65 or older) population ratio was over 7%. Due to the physiological and psychological degeneration, the elderly always has a higher possibility of suffering from chronic diseases. Chronic patients, including the elderly suffering from chronic diseases, have burdened their families with the long-term medical-care need. Until recently, the emergence of nursing homes has successfully alleviated the heavy burden on chronic patients ’ families. A nursing home provides various professional medical-care services to its residents (i.e., patients of the nursing home) by doctors, nursing specialists, nurses, rehabilitation doctors, social workers, and occupational therapists. Each resident is indeed a unique case to a nursing home. As a result, the medical-care process management has become one of the most important factors for improving the medical care quality of a nursing home. This research took the Chang-Gung Nursing Home as an example and applied Unified Modeling Language (UML) to analyze corresponding medical care processes. A medical care process management system was developed and implemented for the Chang-Gung Nursing Home.