Clinical Workflows - The Killer Application for Process-oriented Information Systems?

There is an increasing interest in changing information systems to support business processes in a more direct way. Workflow technology is a very interesting candidate to achieve this goal. Hence the important question arises, how far do we get using this technology. Is its functionality powerful enough to support a wide range of applications or is it only suitable for rather simple ones? And, if the latter is the case, are the missing functions of the "just to do" type or are more fundamental issues addressed? The paper uses the clinical domain to motivate and to elaborate the functionality needed to adequately support an advanced application environment. It shows that Workflow technology is still lacking important features to serve this domain. The paper surveys the state of the art and it presents solutions for some issues based on the concepts elaborated in the ADEPT project.