What are the standard functions of electronic clinical pathways?

The present study was performed to determine the standard functions of electronic clinical pathways (eCP) embedded in electronic medical records with regard to demand definition.

The standard functions of eCP were decided by the required functions determined from interviews with hospital staff, those derived from the implementation of paper-based clinical pathways (CPs), and additional functions generated through the shift from a paper-based to an electronic system. Moreover, the proposed standard functions and those of eCP embedded in electronic medical records for large hospitals were compared by interviews with five vendors.

Seventeen functions were deemed necessary for eCP, and these were classified into six categories: displaying, recording, ordering, editing, variance, and statistics. Although most of these functions are already included in eCP products, their implementations differ between products.

We propose 17 standard functions required for eCP embedded in electronic medical records. The functions for editing patient checklists, checking the occurrence of variance, and statistics are especially important and should be implemented as standard functions. This study will aid in the future development of eCP embedded in electronic medical records.