Operationalizing prostate cancer clinical pathways: An ontological model to computerize, merge and execute institution-specific clinical pathways

Abstract

The computerization of paper-based Clinical Pathways (CP) can allow them to be operationalized as a decision-support and care planning tool at the point-of-care. We applied a knowledge management approach to computerize the prostate cancer CP for three different locations. We present a new prostate cancer CP ontology that features the novel merging of multiple CP based on the similarities of their diagnostic-treatment concepts, whilst maintaining the unique aspects of each specific CP, to realize a common unified CP model. In this paper we will highlight the main components of our prostate cancer CP ontology, and discuss the concept of CP branching and merging nodes. We conclude that our computerized CP can be executed through a logic-based engine to realize a point-of-care decision-support system for managing prostate cancer care. © 2009 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.