Aspects of role provisioning in telecare services

Role provisioning is an essential yet complex aspect of the design of virtual organisations. This paper addresses an even more complex scenario in telecare. Here the roles may be doctor, nurse, carer, etc. And they must be enabled to participate in monitoring remote care-receivers via the internet, using their professional expertise and skills, with access to online-resources. We show that the complexity of role provisioning is attributable not only to defining a role or roles within an organisation, but also to a large degree of uncertainty on how to manage online-contexts. We illustrate this by giving practical scenarios including services in on/offline mode, patient participation, and professional participation with different care-levels. We call these online-contexts “dynamic role settings”. This work describes an approach to establishing a dynamic channel of interaction between a care-provider (e.g. doctor), necessary resources, and a care-receiver (e.g. patient), so as to manage the care-receivers´ needs and the care-providers´ responsibilities.