Verification of timed healthcare workflows using component timed-arc Petri nets

Abstract

Workflows in modern healthcare systems are becoming increasingly complex and their execution involves concurrency and sharing of resources. The definition, analysis and management of collaborative healthcare workflows requires abstract model notations with a precisely defined semantics and a support for compositional reasoning. We use the formalism of component-based timed-arc Petri Nets (CTAPN) for modular modelling of collaborative healthcare workflows and demonstrate how the model checker TAPAAL supports the verification of their functional and non-functional requirements. To this end, we use CTAPN to define the semantics of the healthcare domain specific graphical notation Little-JIL, extended with timing constrains, and apply it to the case study of blood transfusion. The value added in general, and to Little-JIL in particular, is the formal support for modelling, analysis and verification with the explicit treatment of the timing aspects. © 2013 Springer-Verlag.