Two levelled design of an unified paediatric health care encounter

Abstract

The appearance of the new computer-based information technology has initiated the possibility of medical staff performing their everyday routine activities more effectively and efficiently. But to be able to use information technology as successfully as possible, unified and integrated medical encounters are urgently needed especially in the paediatrics field. The tendency to unify the medical encounter is relatively old and had already begun in the ‘pre-computer era’. There were some, unpublished, attempts to unify the child's medical encounter during the last years in our country. Unfortunately they were all unsuccessful for various reasons, but it is our deep belief that the common factor for their lack of success was the inappropriateness of the methodology being used and the neglect of many system theory principles especially soft-system ones. It is the objective of this paper to briefly introduce MetaMet and its application in the design of the UNCLE (UNified Child's heaLth carE Encounter). MetaMet is an information system design approach, based on two-levelled design and its aim is to overcome at least some problems concerned with software crisis and to enable more successful design of (medical) information systems.

Key Words:

• Two levelled design
• Medical information system
• Unified encounter
• Paediatrics