A Migration Framework for Active BPMN Processes in Healthcare

The Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) is a diagrammatical notation to describe complex process models, and it can be used as a common language among stakeholders. These stakeholders could intervene in the development of the processes, also in an agile environment. Thus, the same process could evolve through different versions over time. BPMN has been already adopted in the healthcare domain, where designing health care processes is fundamental for delivering optimal and efficient services to patients without overburdening health care professionals. Adapting and updating BPMN processes within an agile development is paramount in the rapidly evolving healthcare domain. The challenges of migrating a process to its revised versions have been discussed since the introduction of BPMN. However, there is a lack of migration policies that consider compensation strategies when migrating to a revised version at runtime, combined with healthcare- related migration risk classes. In this paper, we propose a methodological framework that includes migration strategies to adopt when the user is already running the process in a previous version. We propose compen-satory strategies to integrate the novelties of the revised process based on the actual users' completion status, with a specific focus on the addition, modification, and removal of tasks. Moreover, the proposed framework includes a color-coded risk classification system encapsulating migration risks and potential impact on patients. This system provides a visual and intuitive way to understand potential risks, enabling clinicians to make informed decisions about the migration strategy. Finally, we showed an application of the proposed framework in a real-world scenario, that is, through an ERAS-inspired prehabilitation program for pancreatic surgery currently developed at the Verona Pancreas Institute.