Process Driven Methods in Diagnosis and Treatment

This chapter explores processes for establishing diagnosis and guiding treatment in a dependable manner. It introduces the idea of creating a workflow to visualize, monitor, measure, and improve the steps involved in diagnosis and treatment. It presents variance reduction methods like six sigma, checklists, and describes potential applications to medicine and neurology. A process driven method can make matters more efficient by providing opportunities for integrating operations and running many processes in parallel. The benefits of integrated, multidisciplinary clinics like the Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) clinic are presented. This chapter also borrows ideas from the field of product lifecycle management (PLM) to develop similar principles for managing diseases across their lifecycle called disease lifecycle management (DLM). In a manner similar to prior chapters, the principle is presented first followed by medical case examples drawn from daily practice. This chapter forms a bridge that extends the journey from the first part of the book that emphasizes decision making and diagnostics into the second half that explores improving treatment.