Design ontology

Building blocks

When designing a care flow, you will use the following types of building blocks:

These building blocks are the result of many iterations of the Awell Platform to come to a visual workflow modeling language that is fit for healthcare processes.

Tracks and triggers

Tracks operate on a declarative model, activating in response to specific events (triggers) within the care flow.

Steps and transitions

Within a track, you will use steps connected by transitions. This modeling resembles what is commonly found in flowchart and BPMN tools, where processes are created by placing steps onto a canvas and linking them with arrows.

Actions

An action is the most low level and granular building block in a care flow. Compared to tracks and steps which purely help you organizing a care flow , it defines what needs to happen by who.

Actions within the system are categorized based on whether they require completion by a real user (stakeholder) or are automatically executed by the system. These are identified as user-actionable actions (such as filling out a form) and system actions (also known as non-user-actionable actions), which include processes like performing calculations and making API calls.

Deviating from BPMN standards

Note that we have deviated on purpose from Business Process Modeling (BPM) language despite it being considered a standard process modeling language. The main reason is that healthcare processes are significantly different from regular business processes and they have several unique requirements that are not solved in BPMN.

Orchestration ontology

Are your curious to learn more about how care flows are represented when they are orchestrated? Have a look at our Orchestration ontology page.