6th European Conference - Academic Conferences

Shada Alsalamah et al.
assure the availability of relevant information in a continually changing scene. However, sharing
sensitive information requires a focus on the person’s role in the treatment process, since different
roles have different information requirements. This necessitates a careful balance between the
availability of life-critical data and confidentiality of patient information so that it supports prompt
reliable care without privacy violation. According to Beale (2004) and Anderson (2008: 3-11), these
two requirements are in direct conflict, which make it hard to achieve, even using the current
traditional computer security mechanisms. Thirdly, the human side in the collaborative environment
increases the complexity. In each organisation, professionals and other employees involved with the
management, use, or operation of the resources within the domain are normally mandated to attend
annual organisation-wide IS training sessions to inform personnel of IS risks associated with their
activities and their responsibilities in complying with organisation policies and procedures designed to
reduce such risk, as well as, to manage resources and protect information. However, the absence of
a VO-wide IS awareness means MDT members are unaware of the overall required IS needs of all
involved organisations, and their responsibility to ensure information received from different
organisations is protected and that its use is fit for purpose in the treatment. Fourthly, relevant medical
information should be available across organisations seamlessly (Yau and Chen, 2008). Finally, there
are additional existing technical, economic, political, ethical and logistical information ownership
issues and barriers that hinder sharing across organisations (Smith and Eloff, 1999; Mandl et al.,
2001; Beale, 2004; Cross, 2006).
This research aims to address some of these issues and challenges by defining and implementing an
approach that would help provide a SCE with persistent control. This should provide seamless remote
access to information, that reflects the changing role of MDT members, as the treatment progresses
along the ICP and provides only relevant information to the team members based on their current role
in the treatment process. In addition, it should offer a common user-friendly set of IS rules to be used
by MDT members from all involved organisations. These rules should be embedded in the information
being shared in order to sustain the rules as defined by the information owner. Finally, having
common IS rules will ease raising MDT members awareness of their responsibilities towards the
protection of exchanged information. This will need to be developed in different research stages,
starting with an understanding of the healthcare system and the information exchanges occurring in
practice, to the investigation of the current information systems’ issues and MDT IS needs for the
collaboration, and ending with a solution that would facilitate this secure sharing of information with
persistent control.
3. Method
We believe it is important to gain an understanding of the inter-professional communication and
information exchange in practice through the study of a real-life scenario. The breast cancer scenario
in Wales was selected as a healthcare system whose structure would be examined to understand:
how MDT members communicate; how HISs are used by the MDT to achieve the overall treatment
goal; how the information is generated and stored; and how it can be used to support collaboration. In
addition, it will allow an initial assessment that will help identify the IS needs for the SCE with
persistent control.
Our reference scenario’s conceptual model is the ICP treatment journey for breast cancer treatment in
Wales. It is divided into six parts (Map of Medicine, 2010a; Map of Medicine, 2010b; Map of Medicine,
2010c; Map of Medicine, 2010d; Map of Medicine, 2010g; Map of Medicine, 2010h), which are taken
from the Map of Medicine (2010i, 2010f, 2010e) and so follow its recommended ICP for this disease.
Using conceptual modelling, we investigated the different healthcare professionals involved in the
treatment of patients, as they carried out their tasks defined by their roles in the six parts of the ICP,
the different HISs used to serve the patient’s treatment at each step, the medical information
generated and stored in these HISs for each task, the IS policies applied, and the inter-professional
communication between the MDT members. Part of the conceptual model that was derived from the
breast cancer ICP (Map of Medicine, 2010h) is shown in Figure1.
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