AUTHOR=Ingvar Martin , Blom Mathias C. , Winsnes Casper , Robinson Greg , Vanfleteren Lowie , Huff Stan 

TITLE=On the Annotation of Health Care Pathways to Allow the Application of Care-Plans That Generate Data for Multiple Purposes

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Digital Health

VOLUME=Volume 3 - 2021

YEAR=2021

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/digital-health/articles/10.3389/fdgth.2021.688218

DOI=10.3389/fdgth.2021.688218

ISSN=2673-253X

ABSTRACT=Objectives: Procedural interoperability in health care requires information support and monitoring of a common work practice. Our aim was to devise an information model for a complete annotation of ac-tions in clinical pathways that allow use of multiple plans concomitantly as several partial processes underlie any composite clinical process.
Materials and methods: The development of the information model was based on the integration of a defined protocol for clinical interoperability in the care of patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and an observational study protocol for cohort characterization at the group level. In the clinical process patient reported outcome measures were included.
Results: The clinical protocol and the study protocol consisted of 540 and 199 concepts, respectively, that showed considerable overlap both as pure duplicates but often as partial conceptual overlaps that needed rectification before merger of the processes. An information model and a common data model were developed for care pathways and implemented to solidify the communication between the stake-holders (health care professionals, clinical scientists, providers and quality registries).  
Discussion: We successfully merged the processes and had a functionally successful pilot demonstrat-ing a seamless appearance for the health care professionals, while at the same time it was possible to generate data that could serve quality registries and clinical research. The adopted data model was ini-tially tested and hereby published to the public domain.
Conclusion: The use of a patient centered information model and data annotation focused on the care pathway simplifies the annotation of data for different purposes and supports sharing of knowledge along the patient care path.