Clinical Processes - The Killer Application for Constraint-Based Process Interactions?

Abstract

For more than a decade, the interest in aligning information systems in a process-oriented way has been increasing. To enable operational support for business processes, the latter are usually specified in an imperative way. The resulting process models, however, tend to be too rigid to meet the flexibility demands of the actors involved. Declarative process modeling languages, in turn, provide a promising alternative in scenarios in which a high level of flexibility is demanded. In the scientific literature, declarative languages have been used for modeling rather simple processes or synthetic examples. However, to the best of our knowledge, they have not been used to model complex, real-world scenarios that comprise constraints going beyond control-flow. In this paper, we propose the use of a declarative language for modeling a sophisticated healthcare process scenario from the real world. The scenario is subject to complex temporal constraints and entails the need for coordinating the constraint-based interactions among the processes related to a patient treatment process. As demonstrated in this work, the selected real process scenario can be suitably modeled through a declarative approach.

BPM application in clinical process improvement: a women 'hospital case study

“…Time: Diagnostic and treatment processes have to be planned based on patient conditions, resource accessibility, and clinic controls, and have to regard a few time limitations (Jimenez-Ramirez et al. , 2018; Combi et al ., 2019; Lanz et al ., 2014).…”

“…He or she has to be effectively included in therapeutic decision-making and therapeutic activities and may require individualized care (Ruiz et al ., 2012; Svagård and Farshchian, 2009). Time: Diagnostic and treatment processes have to be planned based on patient conditions, resource accessibility, and clinic controls, and have to regard a few time limitations (Jimenez-Ramirez et al. , 2018; Combi et al ., 2019; Lanz et al ., 2014).…”

“…Multidisciplinary: For giving the finest conceivable treatment to a patient, different therapeutic disciplines and organizational units have to be coordinated and facilitated (Lenz and Reichert, 2005; Müller and Rogge-Solti, 2011). Resource: Therapeutic specialists, equipment, and rooms are more often than not rare and costly resources, shared among distinctive divisions and, in this way, got to be legitimately managed and optimized (Lenz and Reichert, 2005; Jimenez-Ramirez et al. , 2018).…”

“…A healthcare clinical process is characterized as "a set of therapeutic and organizational activities that are performed in coordination to supply therapeutic care for one or more patients". Healthcare processes have a few particular characteristics that posture one-of-akind modeling challenges (Lenz and Reichert, 2005;Dadam et al, 2000;Jimenez-Ramirez et al, 2018). Such as Patient, Time, Decision, and Multidisciplinary.…”

“…(5) Resource: Therapeutic specialists, equipment, and rooms are more often than not rare and costly resources, shared among distinctive divisions and, in this way, got to be legitimately managed and optimized (Lenz and Reichert, 2005;Jimenez-Ramirez et al, 2018).…”