A Microservice Architecture for the Design of Computer-Interpretable Guideline Processing Tools

Several tools exist that are designed to process computer interpretable guidelines (CIGs), each with a distinct purpose, such as detecting interactions or patient personalisation. While it is desirable to use these tools as part of larger decision support systems (DSSs) doing so is often not straightforward, as their design does not often support external interoperability or account for the fact that other CIG tools may be running in parallel, a situation that will become increasingly more prevalent with the increased adoption of CIGs in different parts of the health system. This results in an integration overhead, system redundancy and a lack of flexibility in how these tools can be combined. To address these issues, we define a blueprint architecture to be used in the design of guideline processing tools, based on the conceptualisation of key components as RESTful microservices. In addition, we define the types of data endpoints that each component should expose, for both the communication between internal components and communication with external components that exist as a part of a DSS. To demonstrate the utility of our architecture, we show how an example guideline processing tool can be restructured according to these principles, in order to enable it to be flexibly integrated into the DSS used in the CONSULT project.