Hello All, I am still pretty new to neo4j and I am not a developer so please keep that in mind. I have attended the data model training and one of the meetups but I am still trying to understand how I might model the the scope of the problem I am trying to solve with neo4j.
However, I do have an interesting problem that a graph database seems designed to address. I would like your thoughts and inputs... I work for a large health care organization and we have a number of issues around managing this complex adaptive system of systems that is our health care system. One of the first issues we have is truly understanding the scale of the problem. Heath care is a system that has not traditionally been organized with technology in mind, it has been organized around the clinical delivery of care to patients in outpatient and inpatient settings. This has contributed to a disconnect between the processes and workflows used to deliver care in modern facilities and the capabilities presented by modern technological solutions. These multiple domains converge in the domain of healthcare and are manifest via a soci-technological-system that is hard for many of the decision makers in helathcare to understand. We have a cognitive dissonance here. I think that graph databases can help to bridge this gap and present complicated multi-faceted relationships in a way that can help make critical business and healthcare decisions. I present a simple diagram that I have 'borrowed' from a colleague at Lockheed Martin because I think it is one of the easiest ways to show an example of this type of multi-faceted system and it's relationships. <https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-iiKHyTDGl7Q/UrPdkYJjLSI/AAAAAAAACYM/31tI9RyRg4Q/s1600/HealthCare+CASoS.jpg> So I am interested in using neo4j to start to map out the interconnected relationships between the systems involved in our delivery of care to our patients. I am beginning this simply by developing a database that represents all of the software, applications, integrations, servers, systems, and hardware necessary to deliver all of the services of a modern hospital. You would think all of this information is already easily available, but it is not. Not in a single centralized system that is available to everyone within the organization to run queries against. One of our recent facilities opened with a list of about 450 distinct applications, but do I know which system is the most depended on by all of the others, not conclusively. I hope to use this first level of detail to help prove out the case that a graph database is a useful tool to use to solve a problem such as this. Following that we would like to start to add additional views or facets that will help to solve different problems within our environment. For example, if we want to replace system X, how much would that cost? How many other systems depend on system X, how many other systems are integrated with system X and it's dependents? What is the total cost of all dependent systems and integrations? What about initially and annually over the next 10 years? How can we make strategic technological decisions without information like this? Or, what percentage of all of our systems are up to current versions? How far from current are all of the systems within a given facility? Or, What is our combined security risk within a facility? What systems put us most at risk? I could go on and on about applications for this type of information, but I think you get the point. I would like to hear your thoughts, feedback, suggestions, and ideas about modeling a problem like this with neo4j. Do you know anyone doing anything similar? I recognize that this is similar to system management in many other organizations but we need to go deeper than that, we need to understand details like which systems contribute to which part of care delivery? What functions does each system provide to support this process? What functions within a particular system are currently used and which are unused? Where is the hidden value in unused capabilities? I will make a point to join other meetups and I looks forward to discussing the issues around problems like this with all of you. For the contributors with the best ideas or novel approaches I will buy you a drink at the next meetup ;) and offer to give you a tour of our innovation center... http://xnet.kp.org/innovationcenter/ Cheers, Nathan -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Neo4j" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
