Modeling of complex processes in nursing and caregiving services

In 2010, JST/RISTEX in Japan started a new R&D program “Service Science, Solutions and Foundation Integrated Research Program”. The authors are engaged in a research project “Innovation for Service Space Communication by Voice Tweets in Nursing and Caring” selected by this program, and are developing a stress-free information assisting system based on smart voice messaging. By providing voice messaging environment optimized for current situation of nurses, the system helps nurses in their cooperation, knowledge sharing, and making work records, and as a result the system reduces various kinds of stresses associated with their work. To estimate the current situation of nurses, it is important to have detailed process models that describe working schedules and how they behave in various situations. Moreover, computer simulation based on the process models is useful for quantitative evaluation of the system. In this paper, we first analyze complex processes in nursing and caregiving services, and then propose a modeling architecture. An implementation based on object-oriented Petri nets is also presented.