how about
: "ps -ef | grep <processID or processname>" imbedded into the code. If no lines returned, then you can be pretty sure that it ain't runnin'. I have run into situations where I needed to know not if a process was running, but rather how many instances were running. For that I shell scripted "ps -ef | grep <processID or processname> | wc -l".
Maybe a bit off track, but I hope it helps.