Automatic variance analysis of multistage care pathways.

A care pathway (CP) is a standardized process that consists of multiple care stages, clinical activities and their relations, aimed at ensuring and enhancing the quality of care. However, actual care may deviate from the planned CP, and analysis of these deviations can help clinicians refine the CP and reduce medical errors. In this paper, we propose a CP variance analysis method to automatically identify the deviations between actual patient traces in electronic medical records (EMR) and a multistage CP.

An engine for compliance checking of clinical guidelines.

Although, clinical guidelines are regarded as best practices for clinicians, clinician activities are not always compliant with guideline recommendations. This paper aims to improve clinician compliance with guidelines. We have developed an engine to automatically report three non-compliance situations: 1) guideline recommendations exist, and the clinician performed some activities, but not according to the guidelines; 2) guideline recommendations exist, but the clinician did nothing; 3) guideline recommendations do not exist, but the clinician performed some activities.