From Clinical Practice Guideline to Clinical Pathway –Issues of Reference Model-Based Approach

Health care systems are facing new challenges such as the aging population, the increasing amount of chronicle diseases and the rapid development of medical technologies. The increasing of the related health care costs lead to the limits of affordability of health care systems. Building Health networks and standardization of clinical processes are the main trend facing these challenges. Actually, the main instrument for documentation and managing of clinical processes are Clinical Pathways (CPs). They allow to transfer evident knowledge in practice and they are the central point of clinical quality management. In contrast, Clinical Practice Guidelines (CPGs) aggregate the evident medical knowledge in a compact form to support physicians in their practice. In the paper analyze the model-driven development of CP for a health network. Therefore, we work out problems of integration. Finally, the paper shows aspect for a model-based integration of CPGs in CPs. These findings are proofed with the help of the documentation of the regional stroke-network called SOS-NET.