Improving the conduct of systematic reviews: a process mining perspective

Area of Science:

• Health Informatics
• Information Science

Background:

• Systematic reviews are crucial for evidence-based practice but can be time-consuming and resource-intensive.
• Improving the efficiency and transparency of the systematic review process is an ongoing challenge for research teams.

Purpose of the Study:

• To demonstrate the application of process mining techniques for enhancing systematic review workflows.
• To identify opportunities for optimization within the systematic review process using data-driven insights.

Main Methods:

• Simulated systematic review activities over one year to generate an event log.
• Applied process mining to discover, visualize, and analyze review process models.
• Calculated summary statistics for time and effort, and analyzed team social networks.

Main Results:

• Analysis of 12 simulated reviews revealed average completion times and person-hours per activity (study selection, data collection, report preparation, meta-analysis).
• Process mining provided visual representations of review activities and team interactions.
• Social network analysis highlighted collaborative patterns and task handovers among team members.

Conclusions:

• Event logs and process mining offer valuable tools for modernizing and improving systematic review processes.
• These techniques can help research teams gain a deeper understanding of their workflows and identify areas for efficiency gains.