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A BPMN Based Notation for the Representation of Workflows in Hospital Protocols

  • Systems-Level Quality Improvement
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Abstract

Flowcharts used for hospital protocols have a series of ambiguities and limitations in order to express some types of information. In this article, a notation proposal for flowcharts that partially avoids these problems is presented. This new notation is an adaptation of BPMNE2, an extension of the Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN), which allows direct modelling of procedures that follow the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP) model. The new notation has been validated in the hospital context, specifically in the field of hazardous drugs (HDs). To measure usability from the perspective of the health staff and auditors, the System Usability Scale (SUS) was used. A total of 47 experts took part in the assessment, resulting in a SUS score of 71, that corresponds to an acceptable level of usability. The feedback provided by these participants allows us to discover benefits and drawbacks of the proposal. Also, it is noteworthy that 76.6% of professionals prefer to migrate to the new notation from the ISO 5807:1985 notation, the most commonly used model. In addition to the direct benefits of this notation from the human point of view, its machine-understandable nature provides the required support for its integration into software tools for intelligent monitoring and auditing.

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Funding

This work has been partially funded by Instituto de Salud Carlos III through the PI16/00788 project (Quality control and traceability of biohazardous medicinal products (BPM) through the Hospital at Home using Big Data models applied to risk analysis).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Escola de Enxeñaría de Telecomunicación, Universidade de Vigo, Campus Lagoas-Marcosende, 36.310, Vigo, Galicia, Spain

    Mateo Ramos-Merino, Luis M. Álvarez-Sabucedo & Juan M. Santos-Gago

  2. Departmento de Salud Pública, Historia de la Ciencia y Ginecología, Universidad Miguel Hernandez, Campus Sant Joan, 03.550, Alicante, Spain

    Javier Sanz-Valero

Authors
  1. Mateo Ramos-Merino
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  2. Luis M. Álvarez-Sabucedo
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  3. Juan M. Santos-Gago
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  4. Javier Sanz-Valero
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Mateo Ramos-Merino.

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Conflict of interests

Mateo Ramos-Merino declares that he has no conflict of interest. Luis M. Álvarez-Sabucedo declares that he has no conflict of interest. Juan M. Santos-Gago declares that he has no conflict of interest. Javier Sanz-Valero declares that he has no conflict of interest.

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This article does not contain any studies with human participants or animals performed by any of the authors.

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This article is part of the Topical Collection on Health Information Systems & Technologies

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Ramos-Merino, M., Álvarez-Sabucedo, L.M., Santos-Gago, J.M. et al. A BPMN Based Notation for the Representation of Workflows in Hospital Protocols. J Med Syst 42, 181 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10916-018-1034-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10916-018-1034-2

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