Cyclic workflow resource requirement analysis and application in healthcare

In our previous work, we proposed a resource-oriented workflow nets (ROWN) approach for acyclic workflow resource requirement analysis. Resource requirements analysis for general workflows can be done through reachability analysis. For a class of well-structured workflows, an efficient resource analysis algorithm was also developed. In this paper, we discuss how to analyze the resource requirements of workflows with loops. The main idea is to convert a cyclic workflow into an equivalent acyclic workflow in terms of maximum resource requirements and net resource consumption. An application to emergency healthcare workflow resource requirement analysis is presented to illustrate how the approach works step-by-step.