Clinical guidelines (CGs) contain a set of directions or principles to assist the healthcare practitioner with patient care decisions about appropriate diagnostic, therapeutic, or other clinical procedures for specific clinical circumstances. It is widely accepted that the adoption of guideline-execution engines in daily practice would improve the patient care, by standardising the care procedures. Guideline-based systems constitute part of a knowledge-based decision support system in order to deliver the right knowledge to the right people in the right form at the right time. The automation of the guideline execution process is a basic step towards its widespread use in medical centres. To achieve this general goal, different topics should be tackled, such as the acquisition of clinical guidelines, its formal verification, and finally its execution. This chapter focuses on the execution of CGs and describes the design and implementation of an agent-based platform in which the actors involved in health care coordinate their activities to perform the complex task of guideline enactment.
Patient care, right to information and consent for minors in situations of parental conflict. Clinical guidelines in the context of Spanish legislation
