#8. Inside These Classes.

Three classes that describe Healthcare have been established: (Healthcare Professionals), (Work) and (Patients); these classes will contain the information that will be compiled to render end-user criteria upon which to build a user-centered healthcare informatics system.

Researchers can record the research into these classes onto a napkin, or even in a spreadsheet—however, we should give ourselves lots of room to expand and explore. Therefore, let's begin by recording the information that we attain from end-users into a database.

We know that this information will be stored within the aforementioned three containers, but the containers should not limit the need to expand the data held within. Therefore, we will setup three scalable database structures that retain information, and will not limit the potential to interact with one another later on.

This first class, (Healthcare Professionals), comprising doctors, nurses, respiratory therapists, and the like, must posses the ability to hold pertinent instantiated information regarding individuals who administer the healthcare. The third class, (Patients), will hold instantiated information regarding individuals who receive the care; this information is the patients' records. (Instantiation within these classes manifests as mere attributes to their objects, like adjectives describe their nouns.)

However, the interaction between these two classes—the class entitled (Work)—requires a bit more investigation. Describing (Work) for the purpose of user-centered design of healthcare informatics deserves more than simple analysis.

(Work) is an action (called a method in computer languages, a verb in human languages). Actions apply to objects as proven by their final state, minus their initial state. In other words, objects remain in one location, unless they are subject to Work, whereby they demonstrate a different final state.

For example, when a surgeon makes an incision, a scalpel is moved along an individual patient at precisely the correct anatomical landmark until it stops moving. The result of this incision can be called a Task. It will have been preceded by other tasks (possibly the work of other collaborators)—such as scrubbing or prepping—and followed by still other tasks—such as suctioning and suturing. These tasks all fit into a Task Flow that describes the sequence of tasks that individuals make as they treat their patients.

Therefore, we have developed an equation to accurately capture and discover data upon which to build a healthcare informatics system based upon actual clinical practice. This equation of a string of written-language variables may look something akin to the following:

(Healthcare Professionals) • (Work) • (Patients)
=
(individualIdentifier • department • subWorkClass • workClass)
•
(action • object1 • conjuction1 • object2 • conjuction2)
•
(predicate)

or

Respiratory Therapy Certified Respiratory Therapists Nebulize Medications With Nebulizers To Patients.

To those who work in the field of healthcare, the above string of variables submitted into the data structure may be recognizable as a routine task. This task can now be understood both by humans and by computers alike.

Therefore, we have successfully analyzed three classes that describe Healthcare: (Healthcare Professionals), (Work) and (Patients); these classes will contain the information that will be compiled to give us the end-user criteria upon which to build a user-centered healthcare informatics system.

Next, since end-users must still interact with their computers to submit information to be studied, we must further investigate human/computer communication techniques.