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Exploding expenditure in health care has led to new reimbursement regulations forcing health care providers to conduct their organisations as business concerns. In order to be competitive providers have started to build networks that allow the delivery of interrelated health services in a well‐adjusted and uniform manner. However, besides strategic agreement, successful networking requires the support of information systems for efficient cooperation and process management in order to deliver efficient day to day service. With serviceflow management we provide a general concept that answers these needs. Based on modelling process patterns and the exchange of XML‐representations of process knowledge and data between service providers, serviceflow management supports organisations in jointly delivering services that cross provider boundaries. Furthermore, it enables flexible handling of processes, which is indispensable in health care. Based on a health care example, we explore the possibilities of serviceflow management and present a Web‐based prototype on the basis of our generic, four‐layered architecture.

PurposeAims to show that workflow management needs to rethink its basis of discussion in order to meet today's challenges and to provide adequate IT support for heterogeneous workflow networks.Design/methodology/approachFirst, the need for flexibility in relating resources in workflow management is examined in more detail. Second, some approaches to managing workflows in heterogeneous networks are inspected and it is found that all of these improve flexibility on the basis of contracting services. Third, it is elaborated how processing by contract supports decentralized resource management through dynamically interrelating social and technical services driven by a cycle ("wheel") of execution and monitoring, evaluation and demand, as well as selecting and contracting.FindingsConclusions are drawn for systems architecture and implementation to guide the design of internet‐enabled workflow support.Research limitations/implicationsImportant questions for the research agenda are: how can one enrich application‐oriented workflow modelling languages in order to describe processes as consisting of heterogeneous services? How should one design and implement workflow engines which enable the turning of the "wheel" with the support of integrating human activities and technical agency as workflow process services?Practical implicationsThe idea of processing by contract may lead to new workflow concepts and technology to meet the challenges of an internet economy based on the "pay as you go" principle.Originality/valueWhereas the workflow paradigm of the past may be phrased as processing by definition, i.e. process execution according to predefined process patterns and resource relations, the idea of processing by contract is suggested, i.e. a mode of process execution driven by recurrent process evaluation and service contracting.