Healthcare, in the US and globally, faces a challenge: how to offer a broader range of preventative, diagnostic and therapeutic services to a greater number of consumers without a proportionate increase in cost or decline in quality. Systems Engineering can help address this challenge, but only if we accept that healthcare involves a wide range of disciplines and specialized modeling tools. The human body is a complex system of systems in its own right, composed of multiple interacting subsystems. It is subject to a range of environmental factors, including the physical environment, lifestyle factors like work, diet and exercise, and contact with other humans and animals (the epidemiological environment). When a problem is recognized, the human body may also become subject to the medical care domain, what we often myopically think of as the healthcare system, with its own subsystems.
InterCAX has published a whitepaper describing a number of examples where emerging approaches to Model-Based Engineering (MBE) are applied (download link). A forthcoming series of blog posts will highlight a few of these:
• A cardiovascular system SysML connectivity model transformed into a Simulink block structure for biological simulation
• A healthcare delivery SysML parametrics model solved using data from a MySQL database
• A medical device SysML model connected to PLM and MCAD tools for engineering development.
• An HL7 messaging development system connected with JIRA issue tracking for project management
These examples use Syndeia™ to connect models across discipline and tool boundaries, allowing users to search, access, compare and update information across the entire system model. Taken together, they illustrate a holistic approach to modeling and simulation in the healthcare domain.
Healthcare Domain System of Systems
Related blog posts:
- Applications of MBE for Healthcare Part 1 – A Complex System-of-Systems (this post)
- Applications of MBE for Healthcare: Part 2 – Simulating the Cardiovascular System
- Applications of MBE for Healthcare: Part 3 – Verifying Healthcare Delivery Requirements
- Applications of MBE for Healthcare Part 4 – Designing Medical Devices
- Applications of MBE for Healthcare Part 5 – Managing Project Issues