Vellore, Vaishak

Rapid ethnography and data mining approaches have been used individually to study clinical workflows, but have seldom been used together to overcome the limitations inherent in either type of method. For rapid ethnography, how reliable are the findings drawn from small samples? For data mining, how accurate are the discoveries drawn from automatic analysis of big data, when compared with observable data? This paper explores the combined use of rapid ethnography and process mining, aka ethno-mining, to study and compare metrics of a typical clinical documentation task, vital signs charting. The task was performed with different electronic health records (EHRs) used in three different hospital sites. The individual methods revealed substantial discrepancies in task duration between sites. Specifically, means of 159.6(78.55), 38.2(34.9), and 431.3(283.04) seconds were captured with rapid ethnography. When process mining was used, means of 518.6(3,808), 345.5(660.6), and 119.74(210.3) seconds were found. When ethno-mining was applied instead, outliers could be identified, explained and removed. Without outliers, mean task duration was similar between sites (78.1(66.7), 72.5(78.5), and 71.7(75) seconds). Results from this work suggest that integrating rapid ethnography and data mining into a single process may provide more meaningful results than a siloed approach when studying of workflow.

Abstract Objective It is difficult to assess self-management behaviors (SMBs) and incorporate them into a personalized self-care plan. We aimed to develop and apply SMB phenotyping algorithms from data collected by diabetes devices and a mobile health (mHealth) application to create patient-specific SMBs reports to guide individualized interventions. Follow-up interventions aimed to understand patient's reasoning behind discovered SMB choices. Methods This study deals with adults on continuous subcutaneous insulin infusion using a continuous glucose monitor (CGM) who self-tracked SMBs with an mHealth application for 1 month. Patient-generated data were quantified and an SMB report was designed and populated for each participant. A diabetes educator used the report to conduct personalized, data-driven educational interventions. Thematic analysis of the intervention was conducted. Results Twenty-two participants recorded 118 alcohol, 251 exercise, 2,661 meal events, and 1,900 photos. A patient-specific SMB report was created from this data and used to conduct the educational intervention. High variability of SMB was observed between patients. There was variability in the percentage of alcohol events accompanied by a blood glucose check, median 79% (38–100% range), and frequency of changing the bolus waveform, median 11 (7–95 range). Interventions confirmed variability of SMBs. Main emerging themes from thematic analysis were: challenges and barriers, motivators, current SMB techniques, and future plans to improve glycemic control. Conclusion The ability to quantify SMBs and understand patients' rationale may help improve diabetes self-care and related outcomes. This study describes our first steps in piloting a patient-specific diabetes educational intervention, as opposed to the current “one size fits all” approach.