DDCAL: Evenly Distributing Data into Low Variance Clusters Based on Iterative Feature Scaling.

This work studies the problem of clustering one-dimensional data points such that they are evenly distributed over a given number of low variance clusters. One application is the visualization of data on choropleth maps or on business process models, but without over-emphasizing outliers. This enables the detection and differentiation of smaller clusters. The problem is tackled based on a heuristic algorithm called DDCAL (1d distribution cluster algorithm) that is based on iterative feature scaling which generates stable results of clusters. The effectiveness of the DDCAL algorithm is shown based on 5 artificial data sets with different distributions and 4 real-world data sets reflecting different use cases. Moreover, the results from DDCAL, by using these data sets, are compared to 11 existing clustering algorithms. The application of the DDCAL algorithm is illustrated through the visualization of pandemic and population data on choropleth maps as well as process mining results on process models.

Process mining for healthcare: Characteristics and challenges.

Process mining techniques can be used to analyse business processes using the data logged during their execution. These techniques are leveraged in a wide range of domains, including healthcare, where it focuses mainly on the analysis of diagnostic, treatment, and organisational processes. Despite the huge amount of data generated in hospitals by staff and machinery involved in healthcare processes, there is no evidence of a systematic uptake of process mining beyond targeted case studies in a research context. When developing and using process mining in healthcare, distinguishing characteristics of healthcare processes such as their variability and patient-centred focus require targeted attention. Against this background, the Process-Oriented Data Science in Healthcare Alliance has been established to propagate the research and application of techniques targeting the data-driven improvement of healthcare processes. This paper, an initiative of the alliance, presents the distinguishing characteristics of the healthcare domain that need to be considered to successfully use process mining, as well as open challenges that need to be addressed by the community in the future.

Process Mining and Conformance Checking of Long Running Processes in the Context of Melanoma Surveillance.

BACKGROUND: Process mining is a relatively new discipline that helps to discover and analyze actual process executions based on log data. In this paper we apply conformance checking techniques to the process of surveillance of melanoma patients. This process consists of recurring events with time constraints between the events. OBJECTIVES: The goal of this work is to show how existing clinical data collected during melanoma surveillance can be prepared and pre-processed to be reused for process mining. METHODS: We describe an approach based on time boxing to create process models from medical guidelines and the corresponding event logs from clinical data of patient visits. RESULTS: Event logs were extracted for 1023 patients starting melanoma surveillance at the Department of Dermatology at the Medical University of Vienna between January 2010 and June 2017. Conformance checking techniques available in the ProM framework and explorative applied process mining techniques were applied. CONCLUSIONS: The presented time boxing enables the direct use of existing process mining frameworks like ProM to perform process-oriented analysis also with respect to time constraints between events.

Compliance monitoring in business processes: Functionalities, application, and tool-support.

In recent years, monitoring the compliance of business processes with relevant regulations, constraints, and rules during runtime has evolved as major concern in literature and practice. Monitoring not only refers to continuously observing possible compliance violations, but also includes the ability to provide fine-grained feedback and to predict possible compliance violations in the future. The body of literature on business process compliance is large and approaches specifically addressing process monitoring are hard to identify. Moreover, proper means for the systematic comparison of these approaches are missing. Hence, it is unclear which approaches are suitable for particular scenarios. The goal of this paper is to define a framework for Compliance Monitoring Functionalities (CMF) that enables the systematic comparison of existing and new approaches for monitoring compliance rules over business processes during runtime. To define the scope of the framework, at first, related areas are identified and discussed. The CMFs are harvested based on a systematic literature review and five selected case studies. The appropriateness of the selection of CMFs is demonstrated in two ways: (a) a systematic comparison with pattern-based compliance approaches and (b) a classification of existing compliance monitoring approaches using the CMFs. Moreover, the application of the CMFs is showcased using three existing tools that are applied to two realistic data sets. Overall, the CMF framework provides powerful means to position existing and future compliance monitoring approaches.

Dealing with change in process choreographies: Design and implementation of propagation algorithms.

Enabling process changes constitutes a major challenge for any process-aware information system. This not only holds for processes running within a single enterprise, but also for collaborative scenarios involving distributed and autonomous partners. In particular, if one partner adapts its private process, the change might affect the processes of the other partners as well. Accordingly, it might have to be propagated to concerned partners in a transitive way. A fundamental challenge in this context is to find ways of propagating the changes in a decentralized manner. Existing approaches are limited with respect to the change operations considered as well as their dependency on a particular process specification language. This paper presents a generic change propagation approach that is based on the Refined Process Structure Tree, i.e., the approach is independent of a specific process specification language. Further, it considers a comprehensive set of change patterns. For all these change patterns, it is shown that the provided change propagation algorithms preserve consistency and compatibility of the process choreography. Finally, a proof-of-concept prototype of a change propagation framework for process choreographies is presented. Overall, comprehensive change support in process choreographies will foster the implementation and operational support of agile collaborative process scenarios.