A novel way of standardized and automized retrieval of timing information along clinical pathways.

Improving the effectiveness and efficiency of acute healthcare is very important nowadays. Optimization of clinical pathways regarding quality, time and costs is one of the key management strategies of critical diseases such as heart attack and stroke. To identify workflow bottlenecks requires a thorough understanding about both the hospital environment (e.g. IT-systems) and processes (e.g. clinical pathways). Having in mind the interoperability issues in hospitals, the standardized division- and system-crossing time measurement is still a challenge. Therefore this paper presents a novel way of structured and standardized retrieval of timing information along the clinical pathway of time-critical diseases in the context of hospital IT-systems, which represents a promising opportunity to identify workflow bottlenecks over several departmental and system borders.