Abstract/Summary

The concept of being ‘patient-centric’ is a challenge to many existing healthcare service provision practices. This paper focuses on the issue of referrals, where multiple stakeholders, i.e. general practitioners and patients, are encouraged to make a consensual decision based on patient needs. In this paper, we present an ontology-enabled healthcare service provision, which facilitates both patients and GPs in jointly deciding upon the referral decision. In the healthcare service provision model, we define three types of profile, which represents different stakeholders’ requirements. This model also comprises of a set of healthcare service discovery processes: articulating a service need, matching the need with the healthcare service offerings, and deciding on a best-fit service for acceptance. As a result, the healthcare service provision can carry out coherent analysis using personalised information and iterative processes that deal with requirements change over time.