Process mining in healthcare: A contribution to change the culture of blame

Abstract

Statistics on medical errors and their consequences has astonished, during last years, both healthcare professionals and ordinary people. This work illustrates the possible error causes and, for some of them, it suggests solutions based on information and communication technology. In particular, process mining techniques are proposed as a mean to discover not only individuals' error, but also chains of responsibilities. Both supervised and unsupervised process mining will be addressed. The former compares real processes with a known process model (e.g. a clinical practice guideline), while the latter mines processes from rough data, without imposing any model. Potentiality of these techniques is illustrated by means of examples from stroke patient management. © 2009 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.