Trace Retrieval as a Tool for Operational Support in Medical Process Management

Operational support assists users while process instances are being executed, by making predictions about the instance completion, or recommending suitable actions, resources or routing decisions, on the basis of the already completed process traces. Operational support can be particularly useful is the case of medical processes, where a given process instance execution may differ from the indications of the existing reference clinical guideline. In this paper, we propose a Case Based Reasoning approach to medical process management operational support. The framework enables the user to retrieve past traces by submitting queries representing complex patterns exhibited by the current process instance. Information extracted from the retrieved traces can guide the medical expert in managing the current instance in real time. The tool relies on a tree structure, allowing fast retrieval from the available event log. Thanks to its characteristics and methodological solutions, the tool implements operational support tasks in a flexible, efficient and user friendly way.