What Role Can Process Mining Play in Recurrent Clinical Guidelines Issues? A Position Paper.

Area of Science:

• Healthcare Informatics
• Process Mining
• Clinical Decision Support

Background:

• Clinical Guidelines (CGs) are essential for Evidence-Based Medicine.
• Past medical informatics efforts to integrate CGs into clinical practice have been fragmented and largely unsuccessful in hospital settings.
• There is a need for effective methods to facilitate the diffusion and adoption of CGs.

Purpose of the Study:

• To review the history and current state of Clinical Guidelines (CGs).
• To evaluate past medical informatics approaches for CG implementation.
• To introduce Process Mining for Healthcare (PM4HC) as a potential solution for representing and adopting CGs.

Main Methods:

• Literature review of Clinical Guidelines (CGs) and medical informatics.
• Analysis of past approaches and their limitations.
• Introduction and conceptualization of Process Mining for Healthcare (PM4HC).

Main Results:

• Previous medical informatics solutions for CGs were fragmented and not widely adopted.
• Process Mining for Healthcare (PM4HC) emerges as a novel discipline with the potential to address challenges in CG representation.
• PM4HC offers a framework to improve CG adoption and utilization in clinical practice.

Conclusions:

• Process Mining for Healthcare (PM4HC) shows significant promise in overcoming limitations of previous informatics approaches for Clinical Guidelines (CGs).
• Further research and community engagement are needed to define the role and rules for PM4HC in healthcare.
• PM4HC could enhance the effective implementation and use of CGs in daily medical practice.