An integrated framework for verifying multiple care pathways

Abstract

Common chronic conditions are routinely treated following standardised procedures known as clinical pathways. For patients suffering from two or more chronic conditions, referred to as multimorbidities, several pathways have to be applied simultaneously. However, since pathways rarely consider the presence of comorbidities, applying several pathways may lead to potentially harmful (medication) conflicts. This paper proposes an automated framework to detect, highlight and resolve conflicts in the treatments used for patients with multimorbidites. We use BPMN as a modelling language for capturing care guidelines. A BPMN model is transformed into an intermediate formal model capturing the possible unfoldings of the pathway. Through a combination of the constraint solver Z3 and the theorem prover Isabelle, we check the correctness of combined treatment plans. We illustrate the approach with an example from the medical domain and discuss future work.