Fire now, fire later: alarm-based systems for prescriptive process monitoring

Predictive process monitoring is a family of techniques to analyze events produced during the execution of a business process in order to predict the future state or the final outcome of running process instances. Existing techniques in this field are able to predict, at each step of a process instance, the likelihood that it will lead to an undesired outcome. These techniques, however, focus on generating predictions and do not prescribe when and how process workers should intervene to decrease the cost of undesired outcomes. This paper proposes a framework for prescriptive process monitoring, which extends predictive monitoring with the ability to generate alarms that trigger interventions to prevent an undesired outcome or mitigate its effect. The framework incorporates a parameterized cost model to assess the cost–benefit trade-off of generating alarms. We show how to optimize the generation of alarms given an event log of past process executions and a set of cost model parameters. The proposed approaches are empirically evaluated using a range of real-life event logs. The experimental results show that the net cost of undesired outcomes can be minimized by changing the threshold for generating alarms, as the process instance progresses. Moreover, introducing delays for triggering alarms, instead of triggering them as soon as the probability of an undesired outcome exceeds a threshold, leads to lower net costs.

Concept and Implementation of Data Usage Proposal Process Based on International Standards in SMITH

Accessing secondary-use healthcare data in Germany requires contracting with each organization that acts as a data provider. The SMITH Service Platform offers a central access point for scientists, facilitating contracting as part of an integrated data use and access process with several Data Integration Centers (DIC) at once. Process support is realized by a central Business Process Engine (BPE), which manages process definition and process control, combined with a central IHE infrastructure. The use of IHE XDS and IHE XDW profiles enables the exchange of process instance information with multiple distributed visualization and user interaction tools for provided user tasks based on international standards. User task information include structured forms for submitting instructions and results as task input and output for the users, and are synchronized between the shared process instance and the BPE. A reference user interface is also provided with the SMITH Marketplace. In the future, further standardization efforts regarding the structured forms and the use of the IHE XDW profile should be pursued.

Handling Instance Spanning Constraints in Compliance Management

Instance spanning constraints refers to instruments to establish controls during multiple instances in or several processes. Many business entities crave an established ISC support system. Take, for instance, the bundling and unbundling of cargo from various logistics processes or the dependence of various examinations in medical treatment systems. During such systems, non-compliance with the ISC would lead to immense consequences and penalties, which can be fatal if it occurs in the medical field. ISC can also occur from process execution logs. Business execution store execution information for the process instance and, consequently, the characteristics of the execution logs. Discovering ISC early enough helps in supporting ISC design and execution. The purpose of this study is to contribute towards the categorization of the ISC and hence contribute to the digitalized ISC and its compliance management.

The Adaptation of a Model of an Artifact-Centric Business Process Instance and Its Validation

The adaptability of an in-progress business process is an essential requirement for any business process management system in dynamic business process environments. Over the last two decades, the artifact-centric approach for business process management has been evidenced to have higher level of flexibility. However, the adaptation of a model of an artifact-centric business process instance is still inevitable and pervasive due to the complex and ever-changing business environments. Almost all works of artifact-centric business process neglect this issue. To fill this gap, we propose a special business rule called adaptation rule to address the dynamic adaptation problem and describe the adaptation by a global adaptation model. Moreover, we provide a validation mechanism over our proposed adaptation rule of the global adaptation model to guarantee the behavior correctness of the adaptation. Through this validation approach, computing the lifecycle of the global adaptation model can be avoided.