Special areas of interest

To demonstrate that our research is closely interrelated indeed, can perhaps be seen by research activities which have a close connection with social relevant institutions and interests, such as: healthcare IT, healthcare process improvement (Value Based Health care), big data & analytics, software development, government, Ministry of Internal Affairs and smart manufacturing.

Healthcare IT

Co-evolutionary information systems alignment perspectives on the continuous alignment of Electronic Medical Records (EMR) with strategies, goals and needs of hospitals and its stakeholders, both during the EMR implementation and after go-live. We also focus on the role of innovative IT (e.g., health information exchange, decision-support) solutions to drive the hospital’s capabilities to sense and respond adequately to the patient’s needs and wishes.

Healthcare process improvement (Value Based Health care)

Development, refinement and evaluation of BPM methods, tools and techniques for the analysis and redesign of care pathways and clinical protocols (with a patient oriented focus), and healthcare business processes, leveraging e-health and healthcare information technology where possible.

Big data & Analytics

The Business Rule Design Pattern topic has published and ongoing research about mining business data in general and event logs in particular to evaluate how well existing business rules are followed and executed, and to propose new business rules that improve systems further. An example of the research carried out in this field is the development of a so called Responsible Social simulation for European Law Enforcement Authorities, a collaboration with the Police Lab AI. Any application of so-called big data analytics in policing and security should be combined with an in- depth understanding of the idiosyncratic dynamics at play in a particular context.

Software development

The Business Rule Design Pattern topic applies design pattern techniques from software development research to the definition of business rules. It also proposed stylesheet-like mappings from business rules and their patterns to system interfaces to increase efficiency, reliability and resilience in software development of business systems.

Government

The Business Rule Design Pattern topic has published and ongoing research applying to laws and efficient techniques for mapping them to end-system user interfaces and guide civil servants in following and supporting those laws.

Ministry of Internal Affairs

Multi-year research cooperation with the Rijks-CIO office at the Dutch Ministry of Internal Affairs dedicated to build knowledge on behavioral decision making in IT projects and share such
knowledge with other ministries on a yearly basis at the ‘Rijks-CIO dag’. Research projects include the empirical examination of language cues in documents (business cases and reports) of large governmental IT projects in an attempt to identify decision biases in an early stage of the projects.

Smart manufacturing

Application and extension of Business Process Management concepts and technology for smart factories to increase flexibility and efficiency in manufacturing processes. This involves for instance end-to-end process modeling, manufacturing process analysis and redesign, advanced task allocation, vertical integration between BPMS and IoT devices) resulting in a business process management system coordinating the work on the factory shop floor.

Selected publications

Benschop, N., Hilhorst, C., Nuijten, A., & Keil, M. (2020). “Detection of early warning signals for overruns in IS projects: Linguistic analysis of business case language”. European Journal of Information Systems, 29(2), 190-202
Vanderfeesten, I.T.P., Erasmus, J., Traganos, K., Bouklis, P., Garbi, A., Boultadakis, G., Dijkman, R.M. & Grefen, P.W.P.J. 2019, “Developing process execution support for high tech manufacturing processes”. In: D Lübke & C Pautasso (eds), Empirical studies on the development of executable business processes. Springer, Cham.
Vanderfeesten, I., Katerberg, D., Türetken, O., & Van De Ven, R. (2018). “A toolbox for the development and implementation of value based care pathways”. In T. Bures, & L. Angelis (Eds.), Proceedings - 44th Euromicro Conference on Software Engineering and Advanced Applications, SEAA 2018 (pp. 281-288). [8498220] Piscataway: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.
Vanwersch, R. J., Shahzad, K., Vanderfeesten, I., Vanhaecht, K., Grefen, P., Pintelon, L., & Reijers, H. A. (2016). “A critical evaluation and framework of business process improvement methods”. Business & Information Systems Engineering, 58(1), 43-53.
Walraven, P., Wetering, R. van de, Helms, R. and Caniëls, M. (2020), “Aligning effectively: the case of Electronic Medical Records,” ECIS2020 proceedings
Walraven, P., Wetering, R. van de, Versendaal, J. and Caniëls, M. (2019), “Using a Co-evolutionary IS-alignment approach to understand EMR implementations”, ECIS 2019 Proceedings.
Wetering, R. van de (2018). “IT-Enabled Clinical Decision Support: An Empirical Study on Antecedents and Mechanisms”. Journal of Healthcare Engineering, 2018, 10.