Seamless Design of Decision-Intensive Care Pathways

Healthcare processes are intrinsically complex and multidisciplinary. In order to maintain acceptable levels of assistance quality, reduce costs and limit the variability of medical practice outcomes, care provision plans must rely on structured and standard procedures. Business process modeling suitably responds to the need for a clear, iterative and comprehensible design approach for care assistance paths, as it fosters workload organization, coordination among participants and resource sharing. Moreover, the integrated modeling of process-related decisions enhances flexible information management, improving re-engineering and adaptability of healthcare delivery plans. In this paper, we propose an integrated approach to deal with healthcare processes and related decision-making design, in order to support the development and re-engineering of diagnostic-therapeutic care pathways and to enhance the (re)-use of clinical information. Such approach is based on BPMN 2.0 and the new DMN 1.0 formalism, developed under the OMG umbrella. Moreover, we apply the proposed methodology to the management of patients affected by Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease in the region of Veneto, in north-eastern Italy.