Recommendations for medical treatment processes: The PIGS approach

Abstract

Medical treatment processes in hospitals are complex interactions of various actors, in the course of which treatment decisions have to be made.Clinical practice guidelines and clinical pathways provide guidance for practicioners for certain diseases. Especially for multimorbid patients several guidelines and pathways might apply. Current process-oriented IT support in hospitals, however, does not consider multiple models for treatment recommendations. In this contribution we define Treatment Cases (TCs) and give an operational semantics for their evolution based on Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) models, which we use to model guidelines, pathways and standard operating procedures. This work is part of the Process Information and Guidance System (PIGS) approach, which aims at providing an overview of treatment history and give recommendations based on the current treatment state and multiple process models.