A Workflow-Driven Formal Methods Approach to the Generation of Structured Checklists for Intrahospital Patient Transfers

Areti Manataki, Jacques Fleuriot, Petros Papapanagiotou

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract / Description of output

Intra-hospital transfers are a common but hazardous aspect of hospital care, with a large number of incidents posing a threat to patient safety. A growing body of work advocates the use of checklists for minimizing intra-hospital transfer risk, but the majority of existing checklists are not guaranteed to be error-free and are difficult to adapt to different clinical settings or changing hospital policies. This paper details an approach that addresses these challenges through the employment of workflow technologies and formal methods for generating structured checklists. A three-phased methodology is proposed, where intra-hospital transfer processes are first conceptualized, then rigorously composed into workflows that are mechanically verified, and finally, translated into a set of checklists that support hospital staff while maintaining the dependencies between different transfer tasks. A case study is presented, highlighting the feasibility of this approach, and the correctness and maintainability benefits brought by the logical underpinning of this methodology. A checklist evaluation is discussed, with promising results regarding their usefulness.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1156-1162
Number of pages7
JournalIEEE Journal of Biomedical and Health Informatics
Volume21
Issue number4
Early online date10 Jun 2016
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Jul 2017

Keywords / Materials (for Non-textual outputs)

  • Checklist
  • formal methods
  • intrahospital transfer
  • process model
  • workflow

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