Dynamic Workflow Management in Clinical Studies
The definition and execution of workflows is a research area that has been around for many years. However the systems currently in use have serious weaknesses. There is no broadly accepted standard that would enable a workflow to be executed in different environments and most systems can't handle changes in the schemas of currently running instances or exceptions. The project tries to overcome these limitations with special regard to clinical applications.
Clinical studies are often long running and have rigid regulatory restrictions. Workflows in combination with business rules can be used to enforce data consistency and the accurate proceeding of the studies. But the studies have to cope with changes in the regulatory requirements and unexpected events during the execution of them (e.g. adverse events). This can require changes in the underlying schemas that already running instances must be migrated to. Those changes must be performed in a safe and documented way as well as proper actions must be taken upon encountering exceptions.
The project focuses on enabling existing engines to perform these operations as well as to define a generic way of how to define workflows that can be executed in different environments.
People
Cooperation
This project was granted by the Zentrales Innovationsprogramm Mittelstand and is carried out in cooperation with the Freiburg based company clinIT AG.