Development of a conceptual model for asthma management system in primary care

Asthma is uncontrolled in more than half of asthma patients due to inadequate and incorrect management. The main reasons for inadequate management are non-adherence, inadequate knowledge of a general practitioner about patientchr('39')s clinical condition, and not following asthma management guidelines The purpose of this study was to develop a conceptual model for the asthma management system in primary care

In this study, according to the guideline of the Global Initiative for Asthma, workflows for the management of asthma were extracted. Then, the conceptual model of the system was developed with unified modeling language and evaluated by an expert panel, including five asthma and allergy specialists, three informatics specialists and two health information management experts who were selected through non-probability sampling method. Data collection tools were the discussion framework with open-ended questions that reached a collective agreement after discussion on the conceptual model. The collective agreements were applied simultaneously to the diagrams of the conceptual model.

The conceptual model was developed and evaluated in 10 diagrams, including business use-case, use-case, activities, sequences and class diagrams. The diagrams were reported after evaluation. The business use-case shows the main use-case, and the use-case diagrams show the more detailed use-case which is used for the system. The activity diagram shows how the patient was admitted, visited, and managed. The sequence diagram and the class diagram also present the order of asthma management operation, the objects required by the asthma management, and how they are related, respectively.

Given the validity of the conceptual model by asthma and allergy specialists together with informatics and health information management, it can be expected that the current conceptual model will significantly help to design and implement efficient systems that meet the needs of users.