Interactive Process Mining Applied in a Cardiology Outpatient Department

Abstract

AbstractCardiology departments receive many outpatients from primary care services and it is necessary to differentiate which patients need special attention. One-stop clinics were deployed in a hospital in Salamanca (Spain) to triage such patients, separating those who needed further examination and those who were discharged.Data (covering December 2018—August 2020) was explored and there was an iterative process in which clinicians, process miners and technical staff at the hospital interacted in special interviews or Data Rodeos. Interactive Process Indicators (IPIs) were generated. During Data Rodeos data quality problems arose and were tackled, input data was cleaned and preconditioned, process activities were discovered and modelled.The original assumption that the iterative implementation of the IPI would allow clinicians and managers to have a deeper understanding of the one-stop cardiology clinics process, was evaluated and validated by them. After each iteration, they found that the IPI was more useful and near to the reality they see everyday.The final IPI was easy to interpret by the clinicians. In the end, many key indicators were extracted, but most importantly, clinicians had a comprehensive tool that they could use by themselves, without technical assistance, to extract and interpret different indicators at any time, providing a high-quality source of information to improve patient-centered daily medical care.