Modeling cancer registration processes with an enhanced activity diagram.

OBJECTIVES: Adequate instruments are needed to reflect the complexity of routine cancer registry operations properly in a business model. The activity diagram is a key instrument of the Unified Modeling Language (UML) for the modeling of business processes. The authors aim to improve descriptions of processes in cancer registration, as well as in other public health domains, through the enhancements of an activity diagram notation within the standard semantics of UML.
METHODS: The authors introduced the practical approach to enhance a conventional UML activity diagram, complementing it with the following business process concepts: timeline, duration for individual activities, responsibilities for individual activities within swimlanes, and descriptive text.
RESULTS: The authors used an enhanced activity diagram for modeling surveillance processes in the cancer registration domain. Specific example illustrates the use of an enhanced activity diagram to visualize a process of linking cancer registry records with external mortality files.
CONCLUSIONS: Enhanced activity diagram allows for the addition of more business concepts to a single diagram and can improve descriptions of processes in cancer registration, as well as in other domains. Additional features of an enhanced activity diagram allow to advance the visualization of cancer registration processes. That, in turn, promotes the clarification of issues related to the process timeline, responsibilities for particular operations, and collaborations among process participants. Our first experiences in a cancer registry best practices development workshop setting support the usefulness of such an approach.