Automated generation and deployment of clinical guidelines in the ICU

The complexity and amount of medical information and data keeps increasing, which makes it difficult to maintain the same quality of care in the Intensive Care Unit, without significant cost increases. In order to contain this complexity, clinical guidelines are used to structure best practices and patient care, but they also support physicians and nurses in the diagnostic and treatment process. Currently, no standardized format exists to represent these guidelines. Moreover, they are often handwritten. Translating guidelines into a computer interpretable format can overcome problems in their workflow and improve clinician's uptake. To this end, we developed an automated generation and execution engine. Based on the requirements, both functional and non-functional, an architecture using the microkernel pattern is presented. This allows us to easily add and modify functionality. This architecture was evaluated with the guideline for the calculation of calorie need for burn patients, used on a daily basis in the Intensive Care Unit of the University Hospital of Ghent.