Ryoko Shimono

ABOUT THE PRESENTATION
Establishment of Standard Process Modules for Healthcare Operation Processes
A methodology to establish healthcare operation processes is required in order to assure quality with limited available resources. However, it is difficult to establish appropriate processes for hospitals because healthcare operation processes are complex due to healthcare-specific characteristics such as patients’ variation and human body invasion. In order to examine complicated operation process, it is useful to understand operation process as a connection of ‘standard modules’. In terms of operation process, standard modules can be defined as best functions to achieve the purpose of a process because standard is defined as ‘a thing or method that has come to be considered acceptable on the basis of someone’s experience’.
Based on the concept of ‘standard’, we developed reusable knowledge in terms of a module, called ‘standard modules’. The standard modules let hospitals examine healthcare operation process effectively and efficiently. When examining operation process, process design can be achieved just by referring and adjusting a set of standard modules, and process improvement can be achieved just by referring and comparing present modules with standard modules.
We established ‘job functions’ for surgery process as a set of standard process modules through implementation of ‘Job function deployment ’, which is one of quality management methods.  In this function deployment, the following viewpoints are used: PDCA-cycle, Process Approach, and healthcare-specific characteristics.
As a result of function deployment, we defined 66 standard modules for surgery process. We verified the defined modules by applying for process design of surgery process at Hospital A. A group of surgery division doctors and nurses confirmed the result of designed surgery process.
In this study, we defined the standard process modules by Job function deployment for surgery process. As a result, we conclude that these defined modules allow hospitals to examine surgery processes effectively and efficiently.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Ryoko Shimono is Assistant Professor at the University of Tokyo, Japan, where she did her PhD in Engineering. Ryoko studied Chemical Engineering at undergraduate school and Quality Management at graduate school. She is interested in modeling of healthcare operation processes for a process design taking into account the healthcare-specific characteristics.
Ryoko’s work has been recognized with the Best Paper Award at the 8th Asian Network for Quality Congress. She has been welcomed speaker at many Asian, European and International Congress of Quality and Nursing Informatics.