An object-oriented model to support healthcare facility information management Jason Lucas a, ⁎, Tanyel Bulbul b , Walid Thabet b a Department of Construction Science and Management, 136 Lee Hall, Clemson University, Clemson, SC 29634-0507, USA b Department of Building Construction, 400 Bishop-Favrao Hall (0158), Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA 24061, USA abstract article info Article history: Accepted 14 December 2012 Available online 16 January 2013 Keywords: Product model Building Information Modeling (BIM) Healthcare Facility management Lifecycle Facility management within healthcare is required to ensure that complex systems are maintained and oper- ational while causing minimum interruption to clinical activities and maintaining patient safety. Their tasks are complicated by fragmented and sometimes incomplete information. To help facility managers better manage lifecycle information pertinent to managing the facility and responding to facility related patient safety events, an object oriented product model is proposed in the context of developing a healthcare facility information management framework. The product model is developed as a result of various case analyses that were conducted using Unified Modeling Language (UML) Use Cases to examine information needs for existing healthcare facility maintenance operations. The resulting classification system and its uses to re- spond to patient safety events are discussed in this paper. © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Within healthcare environments, facility managers are charged with ensuring the efficient operation of systems that are critical to clinical operations and patient safety. The function of the physical en- vironment is important to providing quality care and ensuring patient safety within a healthcare setting. The design, maintenance, and care of the physical environment have been linked to helping reduce pa- tient and personnel stress, improve recovery outcome, and overall health quality [1]. Similarly, hospital construction and renovation ac- tivities are identified as the sources of airborne infection outbreaks due to dust or particulate generation [2]. In order to minimize risks to patients and medical personnel, facility managers are required to comply with standards and guidelines from different jurisdictional organizations to keep the environment safe [3]. Although, proper management of facility information is critical for the efficient and safe operation of hospitals, many facility managers lose money and time due to poor information transfer and manage- ment. Information from earlier lifecycle phases that is turned over to facility mangers is often incomplete, housed in multiple systems, or has no cohesiveness, making it difficult to use for completing facil- ity maintenance processes [4,5]. The origins of poor information management can be traced to inadequate coordination caused by information that is insufficient, inappropriate, inaccurate, inconsis- tent, late, or a combination of these [6]. Despite advances in infor- mation management, handling, storage, and exchange techniques, these issues of poor information coordination still occur. Improving communication is the key factor to the success or failure of effectively and efficiently operating, managing, and maintaining a facility [4,7]. For effective and efficient management of the facility, informa- tion needs to be readily available and be able to support the activ- ities that are taking place. Needed information comes from two directions, (1) horizontally, across the lifecycle from the design, con- struction, and operation and maintenance phases, and (2) vertically, from concurrent processes, such as between clinical operations and facility maintenance. The communication, capture and tracking of this information are often fragmented and difficult to manage. In order to improve the lifecycle information exchange within the healthcare, a lifecycle in- formation framework was proposed to support facility management activities in hospitals [8] (Fig. 1). The framework consists of a Building Information Model (BIM) based system that helps to capture and store facility information for easy recall when needed during the op- eration and maintenance phase. As part of this framework, an infor- mation classification system is needed to manage the information flow. This healthcare facility information management product model is the main focus of this paper. 2. Healthcare facility information management product model The purpose of the proposed BIM-based framework is to aid facil- ity managers in the more efficient operation and maintenance of the facility while consistently having to do more with less resources and personnel. In order to accomplish this, the BIM-based framework is proposed to help manage the lifecycle information. The starting point of properly managing the information is a classification system. This classification is the healthcare facility information management product model. The product model allows the tracking, storing and Automation in Construction 31 (2013) 281–291 ⁎ Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 864 656 6959; fax: +1 864 656 7542. E-mail addresses: jlucas2@clemson.edu (J. Lucas), tanyel@vt.edu (T. Bulbul), thabet@vt.edu (W. Thabet). 0926-5805/$ – see front matter © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.autcon.2012.12.014 Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect Automation in Construction journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/autcon