A Business Process Model for Public Health Information Systems: A Governmental Perspective

The business process models available for the telecom industry have, in the recent past, made significant developments and reached leading-edge maturity levels. The 1997-2000 technology bubble has injected significant amounts of cash in the market, which has allowed a quick maturing of both the process models and its supporting software applications and integration tools. In its turn, the health industry, in what concerns to technology and associate processes has been maturing more slowly, with lower levels of integration and process models more “institution oriented” than “client oriented”. In this paper it is proposed a process model for the health industry, derived from the enhanced Telecom Operations Model (eTOM), from which is derived a functional architecture that intends to support applications that respond to the current technological, political and economical challenges of the Portuguese national health service.