Process Modeling and Conformance Checking in Healthcare: A COVID-19 Case Study

The discipline of process mining has a solid track record of successful applications to the healthcare domain. Within such research space, we conducted a case study related to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) ward of the Uniklinik Aachen hospital in Germany. The aim of this work is twofold: developing a normative model representing the clinical guidelines for the treatment of COVID-19 patients, and analyzing the adherence of the observed behavior (recorded in the information system of the hospital) to such guidelines. We show that, through conformance checking techniques, it is possible to analyze the care process for COVID-19 patients, highlighting the main deviations from the clinical guidelines. The results provide physicians with useful indications for improving the process and ensuring service quality and patient satisfaction. We share the resulting model as an open-source BPMN file.Comment: 12 pages, 2 figures, 3 tables, 15 reference

Fisetin: an integrated approach to identify a strategy promoting osteogenesis

Flavonoids may modulate the bone formation process. Among flavonoids, fisetin is known to counteract tumor growth, osteoarthritis, and rheumatoid arthritis. In addition, fisetin prevents inflammation-induced bone loss. In order to evaluate its favorable use in osteogenesis, we assayed fisetin supplementation in both in vitro and in vivo models and gathered information on nanoparticle-mediated delivery of fisetin in vitro and in a microfluidic system. Real-time RT-PCR, Western blotting, and nanoparticle synthesis were performed to evaluate the effects of fisetin in vitro, in the zebrafish model, and in ex vivo samples. Our results demonstrated that fisetin at 2.5 μM concentration promotes bone formation in vitro and mineralization in the zebrafish model. In addition, we found that fisetin stimulates osteoblast maturation in cell cultures obtained from cleidocranial dysplasia patients. Remarkably, PLGA nanoparticles increased fisetin stability and, consequently, its stimulating effects on RUNX2 and its downstream gene SP7 expression. Therefore, our findings demonstrated the positive effects of fisetin on osteogenesis and suggest that patients affected by skeletal diseases, both of genetic and metabolic origins, may actually benefit from fisetin supplementation

Comparative analysis of clinical processes through process mining: a COVID-19 case study of Aachen's Uniklinik

The main goal of this work was to develop a methodology that could support the conduct of a comparative analysis in the healthcare domain using process mining tools. The data analysed in the thesis refer to the treatment of COVID-19 patients at the Uniklinik hospital in Aachen. The work consists of three main analyses. Process discovery algorithms aim to obtain process models for each wave of the pandemic, which can then be compared with each other in order to highlight differences in the workflow. Through conformance checking techniques it is possible to compare the data of each wave with the normative model representing the clinical guidelines for COVID-19 treatment, in order to identify deviations between the expected behaviour and the actual behaviour of the process. A set of Key Performance Indicators is created to analyse the performances of the hospital. Major changes were found to be in the management of the Intensive Care Unit, the use of respiratory support techniques, and drug administration. The comparative methodology is able to give precise and data-driven information about various aspects of the clinical process and can be applied with flexibility to several Covid and non-Covid contexts