COMPUTER-ASSISTED PROCESS MANAGEMENT FOR HEALTH-CARE - THE IBIS TOOL

IBIS is a broad range informatics tool, which can provide essential as sistance to users during quality development projects in the health ca re environment. It can be used to set up a preliminary process model a nd specify variable and their interrelationships; the system propagate s various quality related effects through the process structure, in a bottom up fashion, by linking quality indices to outcomes, repetitivel y, until arriving at the final outcome, at the top. An incorporated in teractive browser is used to simulate the running process, to test and evaluate it, though a cause-effect interaction on intermediate or fin al outcomes. The tool provides guided support throughout the quality d evelopment procedure and during the continuous improvement process. At the same time, it constitutes an effective training tool on the princ iples of quality work. Additionally, IBIS can be used for the quality system's documentation, by means of a multimedia presentation, incorpo rating descriptive text, images and graphical displays, video sequence s and sound.