Healthcare institutions are increasingly facing pressure to reduce costs, while at the same time improving the quality of care. In order to reach such a goal, healthcare administrators and expert physicians need to evaluate the services the institution provides. Service evaluation requires to analyze medical processes, which are often automated and logged by means of the workow technology.
Process analysis (PA) covers functions of simulation and diagnosis of processes. While simulation can support performance issues evaluation, diagnosis can highlight e.g., similarities, differences, and adaptation/redesign needs. Indeed, the existence of different patients categories, or of local resource constraints, can make differences between process instances necessary, and process adaptation compulsory (even when the medical process implements a well accepted clinical guideline). Proper PA techniques are strongly needed when a given process model does not exist, e.g., because a full clinical guideline has not been provided, and only some recommendations are implemented. In this case, process mining techniques can be exploited, to extract process related information (e.g., process models) from log data. It is worth noting, however, that the mined process can also be compared to the existing guideline (if any), e.g., to check conformance, or to understand the required level of adaptation to local constraints. Thus, the mined process information can always be used to understand, adapt and redesign processes to become efficient high quality processes. Once the optimal process has been devised, it can be implemented through workflow management systems, that in this case we called “careflow systems”.
Medical Areas:
Neurology:
Stroke- Data from the SUN Lombardia registry are used for this research area. These data concern the diagnostic and therapeutic patterns of patients with transient ischemic attacks, hemorrhagic stroke and ischemic stroke. Timestamps are associated to actions performed so that processes may be learned. More than 20,000 records are available for our analyses
Tools: ProM[1]
Please find further information searching in our publication repository or by contacting the Responsible of each area.
The activities in this area are carried out within projects funded by the Healthcare Ministry and the Regione Lombardia Healthcare Division.
People working on this topic:
Supervisor: Silvana Quaglini
Collaborators: Silvia Panzarasa
External Collaborations:
Giuseppe Micieli, Anna Cavallini, IRCCS C. Mondino, Pavia, Italy.
Giampaolo Merlini, Giovanni Palladini, IRCCS Policlinico San Matteo, Pavia, Italy
Stefania Montani, Universita del Piemonte Orientale, Italy