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Methods Inf Med 2011; 50(01): 36-50
DOI: 10.3414/ME09-01-0074
Original Articles
Schattauer GmbH

A Business Rules Design Framework for a Pharmaceutical Validation and Alert System

A. Boussadi
1   Université Paris Descartes (Paris 5), Paris, France and laboratoire de recherche en ingénierie des connaissances et e-santé (INSERM UMR_S 872, Eq 20), Paris, France
3   Georges Pompidou University Hospital (HEGP), Paris, France
,
C. Bousquet
1   Université Paris Descartes (Paris 5), Paris, France and laboratoire de recherche en ingénierie des connaissances et e-santé (INSERM UMR_S 872, Eq 20), Paris, France
2   University of Saint Etienne, Department of Public Health and Medical Informatics, St.-Etienne, France
,
B. Sabatier
3   Georges Pompidou University Hospital (HEGP), Paris, France
,
T. Caruba
3   Georges Pompidou University Hospital (HEGP), Paris, France
,
P. Durieux
1   Université Paris Descartes (Paris 5), Paris, France and laboratoire de recherche en ingénierie des connaissances et e-santé (INSERM UMR_S 872, Eq 20), Paris, France
3   Georges Pompidou University Hospital (HEGP), Paris, France
,
P. Degoulet
1   Université Paris Descartes (Paris 5), Paris, France and laboratoire de recherche en ingénierie des connaissances et e-santé (INSERM UMR_S 872, Eq 20), Paris, France
3   Georges Pompidou University Hospital (HEGP), Paris, France
› Author Affiliations
Further Information

Publication History

received: 20 August 2009

accepted: 27 August 2010

Publication Date:
18 January 2018 (online)

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Summary

Objectives: Several alert systems have been developed to improve the patient safety aspects of clinical information systems (CIS). Most studies have focused on the evaluation of these systems, with little information provided about the methodology leading to system implementation. We propose here an ‘agile’ business rule design framework (BRDF) supporting both the design of alerts for the validation of drug prescriptions and the incorporation of the end user into the design process.

Methods: We analyzed the unified process (UP) design life cycle and defined the activities, subactivities, actors and UML artifacts that could be used to enhance the agility of the proposed framework. We then applied the proposed framework to two different sets of data in the context of the Georges Pompidou University Hospital (HEGP) CIS.

Results: We introduced two new subactivities into UP: business rule specification and business rule instantiation activity. The pharmacist made an effective contribution to five of the eight BRDF design activities. Validation of the two new subactivities was effected in the context of drug dosage adaption to the patients’ clinical and biological contexts. Pilot experiment shows that business rules modeled with BRDF and implemented as an alert system triggered an alert for 5824 of the 71,413 prescriptions considered (8.16%).

Conclusion: A business rule design framework approach meets one of the strategic objectives for decision support design by taking into account three important criteria posing a particular challenge to system designers: 1) business processes, 2) knowledge modeling of the context of application, and 3) the agility of the various design steps.

Keywords

Computer-assisted decision making - decision support systems - clinical organization and administration - drug therapy - computer-assisted organization and administration
 

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