A Dynamic Workflow Modelling and Performance Analysis Methodology for Complicated Clinical Pathway with Variations

Abstract

Clinical Pathway (CP) is very complicated and has many exceptional variations. Generally, its treatment course and control steps can not be totally predefined. Meanwhile, the CP embodies the “Re-flow” therapy features, which is very hard to model, control and manage. Therefore, combined modular modelling method and structure changing mechanisms, a Modular Colored Petri Net with changeable structure (MCPN-CS) workflow modelling method is proposed. A special type of transition called main bus gate (MBG) is introduced to solve the “Re-flow” problem. Moreover, aimed at the variations of the CP, the workflow model for the CP can be reconfigured dynamically by using the mechanism of change-by-modification (CBM) and change-by-composition (CBC). A case study on the osteosarcoma CP evolution workflow modelling is constructed and the modelling is analyzed by presented deadlock detection algorithms (DDA). The result validates that the proposed method can noticeably enhance the flexibility, adaptation, reusability and maintainability workflow model for the CP.