A new architecture for supporting group work in the field of health care

The term of Groupware concerns software supporting cooperative group work. In contrast, CSCW (Computer-Supported Cooperative Work) is the scientific field that motivates and validates groupware design. The goal of our research is to study the software architectures providing coordination between task and managing conflicts within a distributed environment. We intend, in our project, to propose the computer solution that could answer the user requirements and avoid breakdowns in Critical Care Units (CCUs). This paper describes the Workflow management approach for supporting group work in the medical field. The emphasis will be put especially on asynchronous cooperation. To this aim, we propose a cooperative architecture which is based on the Blackboard model and uses the Object-Oriented approach (shared and active objects)