Ontology Based and Context-Aware Hospital Nurse Call Optimization

In this paper, the focus is on how context information can be efficiently modeled with an ontology. This ontology can than be used by reasoning algorithms which are based on this context information. This is illustrated with a use case which studies the evolution from a place oriented to a person oriented nurse call system. An ontology was designed which holds the necessary context information. A nurse call algorithm that uses this information was constructed. The CASP Context framework was extended to implement the use case. This framework is bases on an OSGi framework. Rules are formulated to implement the algorithm. OWL was applied to integrate the ontology into the framework. A Web service interface was designed which allows to insert new information into the knowledge base or extract information from it. At last a simulation was set up to show the advantages of the person oriented approach. The results of a performance study are shown as well.