Modelling a Sustainable Cooperative Healthcare: An Interoperability-Driven Approach

Abstract

Modern healthcare is confronted with serious issues that are threatening its viability and sustainability. Increasing costs and complexity, global population ageing and pandemics are major culprits of the healthcare quandary. In this context, effective interoperability of the participants in the healthcare effort becomes paramount. However, this is also a major challenge as unfortunately, healthcare institutions typically feature strong hierarchy and heterogeneity. As the pressure on healthcare resources and management cost is constantly increasing, governments can no longer rely on outdated 'silo' paradigms for managing population wellbeing. New cooperative and integrated models and procedures taking into account all essential cooperation aspects, elements, participants and their life cycle are necessary to drive cooperative healthcare sustainability. Based on previous research and applications, this paper argues that the necessary artefacts can be built using a life cycle-based, holistic paradigm enabled by advances in Interoperability, Enterprise Architecture and Collaborative Networks research and practice. The proposed modelling approach aims to provide a solid base for sustainable solutions to long and short-term challenges to population health and well-being.