Conceptual model of activity as tool for developing a dementia care support system

Abstract

The clinical domain of cognitive diseases and dementia is recognized by its highly complex knowledge domain, requiring expertise and experience in handling situations with a variety of symptoms and diseases, distributed over different levels in organizations and different professions. In this paper a case study is presented where the process of investigating suspected dementia in patient cases were analyzed. An early prototype of the decision-support system DMSS (Dementia Management and Support System) was integrated in the process. The main aim for the case study was to capture and model the complex target activity for the purpose of knowledge acquisition and formalization in the development of a decision-support system for the domain. The resulting model is general, in that it captures structures and required knowledge at different levels of care, however, specific enough to provide a perception of use context and semi-formal base for further development of the system for different use environments, with different local solutions to work division, etc. The results are fed into the development of DMSS and the general activity analysis framework is being developed. © 2008 by International Federation for Information Processing.