A FRAMEWORK FOR ADAPTING A PATIENT-CENTERED ENVIRONMENT THROUGH MASHUPS Payam Sadeghi, Morad Benyoucef and Craig Kuziemsky University of Ottawa, Telfer School of Management 55 Lourier Avenue East, Ottawa, Canada ABSTRACT In this paper we present a framework which encourages patients and other actors of a healthcare process to collaboratively develop personalized online health applications according to their specific and on-going needs and requirements. We propose mashups, a web 2.0 technology, as a foundation for our proposed framework. In addition, we recommend a system development process which can be considered for using our framework, where all the actors of the healthcare process develop their own healthcare environment collaboratively. We believe that our work can bridge the gap between healthcare providers and patients with the aim of providing a user-centered environment that fulfills the targets of empowering users throughout the healthcare process. KEYWORDS Health 2.0, Web 2.0, Mashups, User-centered System Development 1. INTRODUCTION The 2001 Institute of Medicine (IOM) study ‘Crossing the Quality Chasm: A New Healthcare System for the 21 st Century’ described how our healthcare system fails to provide consistent, high quality care to all people who need it (Institute of Medicine 2001). In particular the study pointed out that the healthcare system is poorly organized to meet the challenges it faces as healthcare delivery is changing from care provided by a single provider and setting to care provided by multiple providers across multiple settings. Two of the key recommendations from the IOM study are the development and delivery of care by high performing patient centered teams in order to coordinate care across different diseases, sites and services over time, and the use of information technology to enhance healthcare delivery. However those recommendations are a challenge to implement as healthcare is one of the most knowledge-intensive sectors where different models and technologies are being developed in order to effectively deliver information across the healthcare process with the aim of providing better services and treatment to patients. Furthermore, healthcare delivery is evolving from disease-centered to patient-centered where patients are active participants in their healthcare process, and the patient’s participation and expertise are greatly encouraged and valued. Current healthcare policies advocate greater involvement of patients in self-care (Timpka et al. 2008) due to the fact that optimal outcomes of healthcare interventions are achieved when patients become active participants in the healthcare process (Bos et al. 2008). For this purpose, Web 2.0 technologies, also called collaborationware, have been increasingly adopted over the past few years by many care givers and health providers for creating a patient- centered environment where both care givers and patients are able to directly communicate with each other and work on possible treatments collaboratively, share and exchange health information, provide emotional support and awareness for improving the quality of treatment, patients’ health and well-being. However, the amount and availability of health information is increasing and the number of health applications and services available on the web is growing rapidly. In addition, people’s use of the web as a primary source of health information has increased dramatically (Karkalis & Koutsouris 2006). The implication of that growth in information and web usage is that information integration and collaboration on a large scale has become complicated. Proactive delivery of the right information to the right person at the right time is particularly important. Overall there is an increasing demand for personalized health systems facilitating the effective IADIS International Conference e-Health 2010 109