Using Business Process Models to Inform Deriving State Transition Diagrams: Applied to BMT Lab in a Cancer Organization

Specimen tracking at cancer centers is done to inform the physicians, nurses, patients and donors, as well as other lab staff, about the current status of ordered test or procedure. At present, specimen states are identified manually by the stakeholders in labs and by accounting department, responsible to charge for the services. This means that the lab specimen states are identified in the tracking system without taking into consideration the lab business process. This creates a gap between the current identified states and the lab's business process. Moreover, the detailed tracking of a specimen is manually carried out using lab sheets attached into the patient file. The absence of an automated, end-to-end states tracking at labs, may diminish the quality control of lab data. This paper presents the work of deriving specimen states from lab business processes. The work applies the case study of the Cell Therapy and Blood and Marrow Transplant (BMT) lab at a cancer center in Jordan. The work contributes in bridging the gap between manually identified specimen states and the lab business processes. Also, it contributes in enhancing the quality control of lab data and accordingly to cancer center data.