Protocols and Guidelines Protocols for Medical Procedures and Therapies1: A Provisional Description of the PROforma Language and Tools

PROforma is a language for describing the actions, information and decisions required in patient care. It is the basis of a method for defining best-practice guidelines, research protocols and other procedures in a form that can be enacted by a computer to help clinical professionals comply with preferred practice. Use of the method consists of outlining the clinical tasks required by the procedure, and specifying details using standard templates for each class of task. This paper presents a description of the PROforma language, and associated protocol development and enactment software, illustrated with examples. Our aim is to develop PROforma as a possible standard for representing clinical procedures; the present version (1.5) is presented as a basis for discussion and is subject to revision.