Structured knowledge acquisition for defining guideline-compliant pathways.

Healthcare providers are facing an enormous cost pressure, wherefore the assurance of an efficient care on a high level of quality is of decisive importance. Clinical guidelines and clinical pathways have been established for that purpose. Clinical guidelines offer abstract recommendations for diagnostic and therapeutic issues, while clinical pathways are a road map of patient management. The consideration of clinical guidelines during pathway development is highly recommended. But the transfer of evident knowledge (clinical guidelines) to care processes (clinical pathways) is not straightforward due to different information contents and semantical constructs. This article proposes a model-driven approach in conjunction with a developed knowledge acquisition tool to improve the development of guideline-compliant pathways.