Multi-Level Verification of Clinical Protocols

In the medical domain, clinical practice guidelines and protocols build a commonly accepted way to improve patient health care. During the last years various approaches have been presented to support the computerization of such guidelines and protocols. However, the verification of clinical protocols has not become an extensive research topic yet. In this paper we will present a partial and domain-specific verification approach to identify particular anomalies in protocols. Our approach is oriented on a plan-representation language of clinical protocols given as temporal, skeletal plans, called Asbru. Asbru provides the necessary hierarchical structure and task-specific knowledge roles, which are needed to divide the whole verification process in subtasks. Our verification approach examines three levels of a plan: the plan itself, all its knowledge roles and all its subplans. The final aim is to arrive at legal or meaningful plans, instead of complete or totally correct plans.