The long term goal of this project is to elevate the communication aspect to a first-class citizen in the process of building and using services and applications. The objective of this project is to create and demonstrate the feasibility of a Communication Modeling Language (CML) to allow users to model their communication needs in an intuitive, flexible, declarative and network-independent manner. CML models are created and realized on the Communication Virtual Machine (CVM) platform.
CML
provides abstractions that shield users from the heterogeneity of
current communication technologies, however, it provides little support
for coordinating user-centric communication services that support
collaboration. To ameliorate this problem we have developed the Workflow Communication Modeling Language (WF-CML), an extension of CML, that provides communication specific
abstractions of workflow concepts. Models created using WF-CML specify
how user-centric communication services are coordinated and adapted to
meet collaboration needs. WF-CML models are also created and
realized using CVM.
Healthcare Scenario used to illustrate how WF-CML may be used to model the communication used in the patient discharge process.
Actors in the scenario: A discharge physician (DP), a senior clinician
(SC), a primary care physician (PCP), a Nurse Practitioner (NP) and the
Attending Physician (AP).
Patient Discharge Scenario: (1) On the day of discharge, Dr. Burke (DP)
establishes an audio communication with Dr. Monteiro (SC) to discuss
the discharge of baby Jane. During the conversation, Dr. Burke composes
a discharge package, DisPkg_1, referred to as a form, and sends it to
Dr. Monteiro to be validated. The DisPkg_1 form consists of a
RecSum-Jane.txt (text file), summary of patient's condition; x-Ray of
the patient's heart, xRay-Jane.jpg (non-streamfile); and a
HeartEcho-Jane.mpg (video clip), an echocardiogram (echo) of the
patient's heart. After DisPkg_1 is sent, Dr. Burke contacts Dr.
Sanchez (PCP) to join the conversation with Dr. Monteiro to discuss the
patient's condition. During the conversation, Dr. Monteiro
validates DisPkg_1 and sends it to Dr. Burke. (2) Since the form
DisPkg_1 is received within 24 hours and is validated, Dr. Burke then
sends it to Nurse Smith (NP) and Dr. Wang (AP)
(If the form had not been validated and received within 24 hours, the
workflow requires that Dr. Burke send out an interim discharge note
(InterimNote 1)). At the same time Dr. Burke continues his conference
with Drs. Monteiro and Sanchez.
Video clip of modeling and realizing WF-CML model (shortened version no sound)
Video clip on modeling the scenario using WF-CML (longer version with sound)
Video clip on realizing the WF-CML model using the CVM (longer version with sound)
Models of the scenario using three DSMLs
CVM Demo (video clip of two users interacting using the CVM)