Annotated BPMN Models for Optimised Healthcare Resource Planning

Abstract

There is an unquestionable need to improve healthcare processes across all levels of care in order to optimise the use of resources whilst guaranteeing high quality care to patients. However, healthcare processes are generally very complex and have to be fully understood before enhancement suggestions can be made. Modelling with widely used notation such as BPMN (Business Process Modelling and Notation) can help gain a shared understanding of a process, but is not sufficient to understand the needs and demands of resources. We propose an approach to enrich BPMN models with structured annotations which enables us to attach further information to individual elements within the process model. We then use performance analysis (e.g., throughput and utilisation) to reason about resources across a model and propose optimisations. We show the usefulness of our approach for an A&E department of a sizeable hospital in the south of Brazil and how different stakeholders may profit from a richer annotated BPMN-based model.

Proposal of BPMN extension with a view to effective modeling of clinical pathways

“…An additional impetus for extending BPMN is the need to include the use of models within the framework of hyperautomation elements increasingly used to support BPM, such as robotic process automation (RPA), the Internet of things (IoT), machine learning (ML) or artificial intelligence (AI) (Zhao et al, 2021;Chakraborti et al, 2020;Gartner, 2019;Bowles et al, 2018). This imposes the need for a consistent, unambiguous description in CPs of the resources used (human and hardware, e.g.…”

A Simulation Study on Demand Disruptions and Limited Resources for Healthcare Provision

“…Furthermore, they have started using the Business Process Model & Notation (BPMN) 3 [4] to visually model the business processes with standardised graphical elements and annotations to represent and describe the flow of activities in detail. It is worth mentioning that BPMN offers the possibility of a shared understanding of business processes between administrators and simulation analysts [4], among other advantages.…”

“…From BPMN models we can manually (or automatically) derive simulation models [4,1] and execute them in simulation tools based on DES, for instance, the Arena Software 4 [15]. Arena provides an integrated framework for building simulation models in a wide variety of applications from industry to healthcare.…”

“…Step 4 is the refinement of the simulation model (DES) translated from the BPMN model, adding timing information such as the probability distribution expressions, also resources quantity and behaviour, i.e., adding the parameters obtained on Step 3 input data modelling. Our previous research [4] has proposed BPMN models embedded with a structured format for text annotations to improve simulation design and what-if scenario management. At the Step 4 analysts can make use of several statistical tools and validation approaches they see fit to their experiments.…”

From Data to Models and Back

“…Furthermore, they have started using the Business Process Model & Notation (BPMN) 3 [4] to visually model the business processes with standardised graphical elements and annotations to represent and describe the flow of activities in detail. It is worth mentioning that BPMN offers the possibility of a shared understanding of business processes between administrators and simulation analysts [4], among other advantages.…”