A reverse-engineering methodology for medical enhancement processes

Abstract This study was initiated for the benefit of the Tunisian Ministry of Health and the Informatics Centre of the Ministry of Health (CIMSP). The scope of our study is restricted to two university hospitals: HUC Habib Thameur considered as pilot institution and the University Hospital Charles Nicolle. We have identified the "hospitalized patient pathway with additional acts” process as a typical process for conducting this study. The objective of this paper is to propose a quality assurance approach for automating and managing hospital business processes. This is to show how to build a framework for an existing process in order to evaluate it and analyse it. In particular, we are looking into identifying the process’s operational limits, its malfunctioning and shortcoming, its degree of ICT integration and finally we are interested in evaluating the process’s quality when deployed on different health care sites. It is in this sense that we propose, in this work, to put in place an approach for managing hospital business processes. This approach contributes first to ensuring reliable monitoring of the processes by obtaining an overview of each one. Second, it helps to precisely measure the minimum and maximum duration of execution of the process. Third, we also aim to identify the formal and informal actors involved and validate their commitment and expertise with relation to the implementation of the process. We chose to use Business Process Modelling and Notation (BPMN) [13] and UML for our business processes modelling. Both technologies are recognized in the industrial world and are recommended by a wide audience for formal definition, documentation and understanding of the hospital business process. Finally, the proposed approach can also be exploited for the development of new processes as extension or enhancement to the existing ones. The resulting models will be used as a framework for actors centred process management and evaluation.