On clinical utility and systematic reporting in case studies of healthcare process mining: Comment on: 10.3390/ijerph17041348 “Towards the Use of Standardised Terms in Clinical Case Studies for Process Mining in Healthcare”

Recently in Environmental Research and Public Health, Helm and colleagues reported on a systematic review of healthcare process mining (HPM) case reports, focusing on the reporting of technical and clinical aspects and discussing standardisation terms in future HCM reports utilising existing ontologies. HCM remains in its relative infancy, necessitating a shared understanding of terms and concepts as the wider community begins to leverage these techniques.
In healthcare, there are numerous processes often framed differently—patient journey, clinician and administrative workflows, prospectively designed organisational/clinical pathways, supply chains, etc. Since these processes are highly dependent on individual patients, clinicians, and administrators, as well as the interface between multiple other processes and systems, there is considerable variability in many pathways. “Warranted” clinical variability occurs where a deviation in the usual pathway occurs because the patient/condition warrants differential management. In contrast, “unwarranted” clinical variability is seen as a critical factor associated with suboptimal health outcomes...