Context trees: representing co-operative healthcare activities in IREP

The IREP Project is based on the concept of 'rehabilitation programme' (LLP--Life Long Programme). It consists in a global vision of the patient's therapeutic-rehabilitative path, that is realised by the description, selection, adaptation and evaluation of generalised protocols. This paper discusses the issues arising in the definition of multidisciplinary rehabilitation programmes involving the co-operation of independent teams. A methodology to formalise and collect descriptions of programmes is presented. A programme is considered as a set of interconnected activities, represented as a graph of Activity Modules, organised in Context Trees; the resulting structured representation is the framework to implement timely and effective communication services in a global information system on rehabilitation. Based on this experience, a set of possible requirements for software tools to formalise and manage programmes have been suggested; it was the basis for the realisation of a first prototype under field test in a rehabilitation environment by other partners of the IREP Project.