A universal language for medical protocols
The need for standardization of best practices
As medicine evolved as a science in modern times, evidence-based practice assumed a prominent role in day-to-day patient care.
Today, for most common and well-known diseases, physicians are expected to prescribe for cost-effective exams, to use safe and effective drugs and to follow up patients managing risk correctly.
However, these widely accepted best-practices are translated into algorithms (aka diagrams, protocols or sets of actions) in a random fashion.
The Problems with freely drawn medical algorithms
If one (be that a physician, a hospital, medical society, etc) designs an algorithm with complete creative liberty, several problems arise:
1) Complexity
Disease or specialty-specific diagrams can be complex, even digitally, to represent due to multiple artifacts invented.
2) Ambiguity
Differently designed algorithms have the risk of being ambiguous which can result in patient harm.
3) Specialty-specific
Having specific notations for each specialty blocks algorithm matching and affects patient-centered care/integrated care.
4) Time-consuming learning curve
New-comers have to be constantly learning new representations of protocols.
5) Lack of collaboration
All the abovementioned problems create silos and isolate potential contributors to these algorithms.
The solution: A new open notation for medicine
In other industries, notations have already been developed and disseminated (e.g. BPMN, UML), but that not true in Medicine.
Today, we’re making our medical notation open to everyone.
We’ve been using it for the past months with all kinds of physicians and it’s great:
1) Analogic-first
It was design for you to draw with pen and paper (or whiteboard). Forget complex software and use century-tested instruments to translate your protocols.
2) Simple and easy
With only 3 symbols (rectangle, rhombus and circles) you can represent a myriad of clinical actions.
3) Flexible
As it was designed abstracted from any concepts specific to a disease or specialty, it is completely flexible and allows you too drawn any medical algorithm.
4) Clear
This notation is clear to read and draws you to clarify concepts (we’ve all seen those Dx-Tx-Px guidelines). As such, it facilitates collaboration for you to develop algorithms by yourself or when gathered with your team.
This is the first version of this medical notation and we’ll be updating it with your feedback.
Next steps:
Try it out here
Read the documentation here
Discuss it here
I’m eager to read your thoughts below! 👇
