Engineering Medical Processes to Improve Their Safety

Abstract

Abstract. This paper describes experiences in using precise definitions of medical processes as the basis for analyses aimed at finding and correcting defects leading to improvements in patient safety. The work entails the use of the Little-JIL process definition language for creating the precise definitions, the Propel system for creating precise specifications of process requirements, and the FLAVERS systems for analyzing process definitions. The paper describes the details of using these technologies, employing a blood transfusion process as an example. Although this work is still ongoing, early experiences suggest that our approach is viable and promising. The work has also helped us to learn about the desiderata for process definition and analysis technologies that are intended to be used to engineer methods.

Using software engineering technology to improve the quality of medical processes

“…But the greater specification breath and detail of our process modeling approach and the feedback obtained from rigorous analysis have led to valuable insights and process improvements so that they now feel the effort needed to create these models is warranted. The insights gained and the benefits of this approach have been described from both the medical perspective [12,13], and from the computer science perspective [5][6][7]20]. Here we present some observations that derive from our experiences using software engineering modeling and analysis techniques to create, validate, and improve medical processes.…”

COVID-19 and Beyond: Taming the Virtual Healthcare Tiger with Colored Petri Nets based Modeling and Simulation

“…Early work on engineering medical processes and improving safety through the use of process modeling and analysis is reported in [7] and [8]. Other early works identified uses of Colored Petri Net models for intelligent wireless medical device networks for flexible hospital capacity management [9,10].…”