Project: Enterprise Unified Guideline Engine
The project’s goal is to support the adoption of evidence-based medicine and best-practice standards of care through an easy to use software application designed around the way doctors work. _x000D_Evidence based medicine is the integration of clinical expertise, patient values and the best available evidence into the decision making process for patient care. The results from rigorous research studies and the most up to date data about prevention, diagnosis, therapy, risks and benefits related to medical conditions are evaluated and summarized in a collection of clinical guidelines documents. During the last two decades a number of national guidelines clearinghouses have emerged, COtaining catalogs of high-quality clinical protocols published by various professional physician organizations._x000D_While clinicians became increasingly familiar to applying medical guidelines to the actual care process, the information technology industry has been slow to catch up. Several specifications were created to represent the clinical protocols in a computable format. The best known ones are ASBRU (TUW), EON (Stanford Medical Informatics), GELLO (HL7), GUIDE (University of Pavia), PRODIGY (Newcastle University) and PROforma (Cancer Research UK). However due to their inherent complexity, steep learning curve and lack of software tools they are sparingly used in production. _x000D_On the other hand, workflow engines are widely available and proved their effectiveness in modeling and execution of business processes. The XML Process Definition Language (XPDL) is a robust Workflow Management Coalition standard that has been adopted by all major workflow engine vendors and is capable to model complex clinical processes. In other words, XPDL represents a friendly cross-industry technological alternative to healthcare specific decision logic representation standards._x000D_Starting from the healthcare practitioner needs we identified that: _x000D_• a modern application should be task oriented_x000D_• the point of care should be guideline based_x000D_• the decision support should be patient oriented_x000D_• the patient should receive specific advice_x000D_• the guidelines should also be expressed in conventional narrative way _x000D_• the business processes and guidelines should be correlated_x000D_EUGEN will address all of these issues by:_x000D_• displaying the medical guidelines in a clear and easy to understand way_x000D_• providing an easy to use guideline designer to encourage doctors to build and personalize the protocols according to their practice needs_x000D_• using standards based services (XPDL workflow engine, business rules engine) to provide only pertinent information at specific decision time or action, based on patient clinical background, medical knowledge and treatment plans._x000D_Technically speaking the project will have four integrated modules:_x000D_• Guideline Engine – XPDL based workflow engine used for guidelines execution_x000D_• Business Rule Engine – to provide the decision support services_x000D_• Vocabulary Service - module in charge with semantic interoperability and code mapping_x000D_• EUGEN Architect (client side application)_x000D_The EUGEN Architect will be the visual tool used to design the clinical guidelines and to translate them to XPDL. It will be a Rich Internet Application able to run on multiple operating systems. It will support any hierarchical structure, logical sequences and execution order and also any characteristics of plans._x000D_The EUGEN project will be based on the following standards: HL7 Common Terminology Service (defines the core behavior for managing and COtaining terminologies and vocabularies), CDA – Clinical document architecture (markup standard language that specifies the structure and semantics of clinical documents), XPDL, W3C Standards (WS Standards, OWL and RDF)._x000D_The project participants are:_x000D_Info World SRL (Romania) – has a long experience in researching and developing IT solutions for the healthcare market and brings an in-depth expertise in Workflow Technology._x000D_Sepp.med GMBH (Germany) - is a reliable and well-established P for development and quality assurance of complex and safety-critical systems. Will design and implement the test approach of the software component._x000D_Politehnica University of Bucharest (Romania) – will apply its experience in 2D/3D graphics to design the EUGEN Architect_x000D_FOKUS - Fraunhofer-Institut für Offene Kommunikationssysteme (Germany) - will be conducting research and test tool development on new methods for model-based test generation, execution and validation of clinical guidelines._x000D__x000D_
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Acronym
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EUGEN
(Reference Number: 5119)
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Duration
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24/09/2009 - 24/08/2011
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Project Topic
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To provide a global web service for medical guideline decision support
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Network
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Eurostars
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Call
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Eurostars Cut-Off 3
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Project partner
