Semiotics-oriented method for generation of clinical pathways

Abstract

Large numbers of people continue to be successfully cared for and treated in the National Health Service, but a significant number of errors and other forms of harm occur. These errors are mainly a result of human error or occur in consequence of poor process, procedure and control design. In this paper, we present a semiotic approach to generating clinical pathways by capturing knowledge from syntactic level to social level and guiding the modelling of clinical pathways using Business Process Modelling Notation (BPMN) best practice to visualise the process. This will result in more rigorous control and visibility of the care process ensuring completeness, consistency and patient safety by enabling the mapping of formal and informal/safety controls into clinical pathways. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2013.