Patient healthcare trajectory. An essential monitoring tool: a systematic review.

Patient healthcare trajectory is a recent emergent topic in the literature, encompassing broad concepts. However, the rationale for studying patients' trajectories, and how this trajectory concept is defined remains a public health challenge. Our research was focused on patients' trajectories based on disease management and care, while also considering medico-economic aspects of the associated management. We illustrated this concept with an example: a myocardial infarction (MI) occurring in a patient's hospital trajectory of care. The patient follow-up was traced via the prospective payment system. We applied a semi-automatic text mining process to conduct a comprehensive review of patient healthcare trajectory studies. This review investigated how the concept of trajectory is defined, studied and what it achieves.