The Business Process Management for Healthcare (BPM+ Health) Consortium: motivation, methodology, and deliverables for enabling clinical knowledge interoperability (CKI)

Abstract

Objectives: To enhance the Business Process Management (BPM)+ Healthcare language portfolio by incorporating knowledge types not previously covered and to improve the overall effectiveness and expressiveness of the suite to improve Clinical Knowledge Interoperability.

Methods: We used the BPM+ Health and Object Management Group (OMG) standards development methodology to develop new languages, following a gap analysis between existing BPM+ Health languages and clinical practice guideline knowledge types. Proposal requests were developed based on these requirements, and submission teams were formed to respond to them. The resulting proposals were submitted to OMG for ratification.

Results: The BPM+ Health family of languages, which initially consisted of the Business Process Model and Notation, Decision Model and Notation, and Case Model and Notation, was expanded by adding 5 new language standards through the OMG. These include Pedigree and Provenance Model and Notation for expressing epistemic knowledge, Knowledge Package Model and Notation for supporting packaging knowledge, Shared Data Model and Notation for expressing ontic knowledge, Party Model and Notation for representing entities and organizations, and Specification Common Elements, a language providing a standard abstract and reusable library that underpins the 4 new languages.

Discussion and conclusion: In this effort, we adopted a strategy of separation of concerns to promote a portfolio of domain-agnostic, independent, but integrated domain-specific languages for authoring medical knowledge. This strategy is a practical and effective approach to expressing complex medical knowledge. These new domain-specific languages offer various knowledge-type options for clinical knowledge authors to choose from without potentially adding unnecessary overhead or complexity.

Keywords: BPM+; OMG; clinical knowledge interoperability; knowledge representation; standards development organizations; systems engineering.