Modeling decision support rule interactions in a clinical setting

Traditionally, rule interactions are handled at implementation time through rule task properties that control the order in which rules are executed. By doing so, knowledge about the behavior and interactions of decision rules is not captured at modeling time. We argue that this is important knowledge that should be integrated in the modeling phase. In this project, we build upon current work on a conceptual schema to represent clinical knowledge for decision support in the form of if then rules. This schema currently captures provenance of the clinical content, context where such content is actionable (i.e. constraints) and the logic of the rule itself. For this project, we borrowed concepts from both the Semantic Web (i.e., Ontologies) and Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS), to explore a conceptual approach for modeling rule interactions in an enterprise-wide clinical setting. We expect that a more comprehensive modeling will facilitate knowledge authoring, editing and update; foster consistency in rules implementation and maintenance; and develop authoritative knowledge repositories to promote quality, safety and efficacy of healthcare.