Computable Representation of Antimicrobial Recommendations Using Clinical Rules: A Clinical Information Systems Perspective

The overuse of antimicrobials promotes the resistance of antibiotics, which is a great concern in hospitals. Clinical Guidelines are essential documents that provide useful recommendations to clinicians about the therapy. In order to obtain a Computerised Clinical Guideline, main efforts to represent this knowledge focus on ad-hoc data flow models. However, they have had a low impact in the industry since they generally neglect clinical standards or they are hard to maintain due to the model complexity. In this work, we propose to step backward to use rule-based approaches to obtain clinical rules, more simple to model and easier to manage. We also review and discuss main rule representation alternatives and we present a case study in the Ventilator Associated Pneumonia from a Clinical Guideline.