Infinicare framework for integrated understanding of health-related activities in clinical and daily-living contexts

Abstract

Clinical and consumer health informatics interventions promise to transform health care, yielding higher quality, more accessible care at a lower cost. However, the potential of these interventions cannot be achieved if they are developed and rolled out in a disconnected way: clinic-based systems typically do not interface with home-based systems that capture patient-generated health-related data. The fragmentation between these interventions severely limits the benefits of all interventions; given that health care is a continuum between clinical and daily-living settings. We introduce the Infinicare framework, which posits that clinical health-related activities "shape" daily-living-based health-related activities and, conversely, that daily-living-based health-related activities "inform" activities in clinics. Non-alignment of activities across these diverse contexts yields systemic gaps. Workflow studies that capture health-related activities and characterise gaps between clinical and daily-living contexts can inform the design and implementation of gap-filling, collaborative health information technologies. To inform these technologies, workflow studies should be patient-oriented, include both clinical and daily-living settings and subsume both process and structure variables. Novel methodologies are needed to effectively and efficiently capture health-related activities across both clinical and daily-living settings and their contexts. Guidelines for applying these recommendations in developing collaborative health information technologies are provided.

Keywords: Workflow; context; daily-living; health-related activities; patient-oriented.

Figure 1.

Examples of gaps between clinical and daily-living settings.

Figure 2.

Visual depiction of Infinicare.

Figure 3.

Workflow representation of Jane’s daily routine.