Managing information models for e-health via planned evolutionary pathways

Abstract

E-Health is one of the many e-application areas promising to increase global connectivity and computational power of applied computer networks. Information modelling is an essential ingredient of developing e-health applications. The theoretical foundations of information modelling are growing. System theory, semiotics, semantics, and ontology have become allied partners to build powerful information models. Phrases like "ontology-based conceptual modelling" indicate this process of sophistication. When developing practical e-health systems the management of complexity is still a major challenge. Evolutionary pathways seem to be an appropriate approach to handle complexity. Significant gaps between existing pieces of avantgarde academic theory and broad practical success stories are seen. The idea of planning evolutionary pathways as mechanism to handle information model complexity is illustrated in one area, namely the development of a study and subject record manager for health-relevant physiology research. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2004.