Project summary

We hypothesize that similar healthcare pathways can be identified from routine clinical data and small data situations with multiple distinct pathways and decreasing numbers of observed transitions per pathway over time. Using the healthcare pathways of a particular small group of patients as a starting point, we will develop approaches to quantify the similarity of the pathways of other patients to this group based on multistate models. We will quantify uncertainty and construct confidence intervals for these measures, and use them to formulate hypotheses and corresponding tests that allow to decide on the similarity of two healthcare pathways. Furthermore, new clustering methods for several multistate models will be developed, for identification of patient groups that represent best practice healthcare pathways.

Our methods

• Knowledge-driven modeling
• Local perspective