Healthcare Modelling through Enterprise Architecture: A Hospital Case

Abstract

Enterprise Architecture (EA) is a strategic activity and planning tool for an enterprise, which facilitates decision-making by enabling a conceptual view of the enterprise. The main objective of an EA approach is to define the layout of organizational components and relationships among them, in order to understand the integration of objects for further improvement. In a healthcare context, EA has the potential to facilitate integrating healthcare units with business architecture. Adapting appropriate tools for management analysis and decisions by healthcare management could have a significant impact on healthcare organizations such as in hospital goal achievement. Process analysis within EA has the potential to improve understanding of healthcare functions leading to better healthcare-IT alignment. The healthcare domain is significant due to its sensitivity of operations and human involvement. Although improvement is welcomed in the healthcare arena, it is problematic and challenging to manage resources and service improvement is difficult due to the complexity of operations. This research is intended to explore a process view and modelling of healthcare using EA. Also, this research is based in a hospital in the United Kingdom. The research aims to design and provide the insight of an EA approach to process architecture for healthcare-IT alignment. In our case study, we analyzed healthcare organizational processes. This paper conceptualizes this analysis and provides an overview of healthcare processes in the context of EA to improve healthcare management.