Assessing medical treatment compliance based on formal process modeling

Abstract

The formalization and analysis of medical guidelines play an essential role in clinical practice nowadays. Due to their inexorably generic nature such guidelines leave room for different interpretation and implementation. Hence, it is desirable to understand this variability and its implications for patient treatment in practice. In this paper we propose an approach for comparing guideline-based treatment processes with empirical treatment processes. The methodology combines ideas from workflow modeling, process simulation, process mining, and statistical methods of evidence-based medicine. The applicability of the approach is illustrated based on the Cutaneous Melanoma use case. © 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin.