Workflow

About: Workflow is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 31996 publications have been published within this topic receiving 498339 citations.

The Process Specification Language (PSL) Overview and Version 1.0 Specification

Abstract: This document describes Version 1.0 of the Process Specification Language (PSL). PSL is an interchange format designed to help exchange process information automatically among a wide variety of manufacturing applications such as process modeling, process planning, scheduling, simulation, workflow, project management, and business process re-engineering tools. These tools would interoperate by translating between their native format and PSL. Then, any system would be able to automatically exchange process information with any other system via PSL.

Constraint-based workflow management systems : shifting control to users

Abstract: Many organizations use information technology to support various aspects of their business processes: the operational aspect, collaboration between employees, etc Workow management systems aim at supporting the operational aspect of complex business processes by using process models to automate the ordering of activities (ie, ow of work) The term `support' here relates to the ability of workow management systems to control the execution of business processes Contemporary workow management systems lack exibility, ie, the system controls in detail how employees should execute business processes While work- ow management systems deal well with predictable business processes, they are not able to handle unforeseen situations, which occur often in real-life business processes Although employees mostly have the knowledge and experience that enables them to deal with exceptional situations, they are not able to apply the right action because the system enforces the standard procedure of work This often has various undesired consequences: work is done `outside' the system, work cannot be done in the appropriate way, dissatisfaction of employees, resistance towards the system, etc As a result, workow management systems cannot be used properly if it is necessary that employees control the execution of business processes This thesis proposes a new approach to workow management systems that can facilitate contemporary business processes in a better way by enabling a better balance between exibility and support As opposed to traditional approaches which use procedural process models to explicitly (ie, step-by-step) specify the execution procedure, the proposed approach aims at the specification of business processes using constraints, ie, processes are modeled by rules that should be followed while executing business processes Constraint-based models implicitly specify the execution procedure by means of constraints: any execution that does not violate constraints is possible In addition to proposing a constrainbased approach, a concrete language for specification of constraints is given and the proof-of-concept prototype declare is described On the one hand, constraint-based management systems are exible, which allows employees to deal with specific (e/g/ unpredicted) situations in the most adequate way On the other hand, constraint-based management systems can support employees when it comes to aspects of business processes that are too complex for humans to handle There are several ways in which constraintbased management systems can provide both exibility and support

Cascade: crowdsourcing taxonomy creation

Abstract: Taxonomies are a useful and ubiquitous way of organizing information. However, creating organizational hierarchies is difficult because the process requires a global understanding of the objects to be categorized. Usually one is created by an individual or a small group of people working together for hours or even days. Unfortunately, this centralized approach does not work well for the large, quickly changing datasets found on the web. Cascade is an automated workflow that allows crowd workers to spend as little at 20 seconds each while collectively making a taxonomy. We evaluate Cascade and show that on three datasets its quality is 80-90% of that of experts. Cascade has a competitive cost to expert information architects, despite taking six times more human labor. Fortunately, this labor can be parallelized such that Cascade will run in as fast as four minutes instead of hours or days.

Clinical Decision Support: The Road Ahead

Abstract: Introduction: Clinical decision support What it is and why important A brief history of the field Types of computer-aided decision making Case studies Regenstrief experience Brigham experience LDS HELP experience Lessons learned, summary Where are we now? Penetration Limitations New motivations and interest Where does the knowledge come from? Expert knowledge Data mining and predictive modeling Evidence-based medicine Problems in developing decision support applications Representation of the knowledge Integration with host environments Managing the knowledge: authoring and update Standards efforts Arden syntax Guidelines GELLO Vocabularies and data models Process/workflow models Issues Top-down vs. bottom-up approaches Legacy investments Differences among models and purposes Institutional KM challenges Getting a handle on the problem Content management and collaborative authoring/editing Common representation Common interfaces/transaction services Tools for knowledge management A timetable of opportunities Rules knowledge General expressions/calculation/logic Knowledge element groups Order sets Reports and data entry forms Prospects for dissemination and sharing Knowledge as a universal commodity not a proprietary resource Attempts to establish consortia What is needed to overcome barriers