MODELING CLINICAL PATHWAYS AS BUSINESS PROCESS MODELS USING BUSINESS PROCESS MODELING NOTATION

Abstract

We take a healthcare knowledge management approach to represent the Clinical Pathway (CP) as workflows. We have developed a semantic representation of CP in terms of a CP ontology that outlines the different clinical processes, their properties, constraints and relationships, and is able to computerize a range of CP. To model business workflows we use the graphical Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) modeling language that generates a BPMN ontology. To represent a CP as a BPMN workflow, we have developed a semantic interoperability (mapping ontology) framework between the CP ontology and the BPMN ontology. The mapping ontology allows the alignment of relations between two ontologies and ensures that a clinical process defined in the CP ontology is mapped to a standard BPMN workflow element. We execute our BPMN-based CP in the Lombardi workflow engine, whereby users can view the execution of the CP and make the necessary adjustments.