# A Goal-Driven Evaluation Method Based On Process Mining for Healthcare Processes
## 1 Introduction  
In healthcare process management, healthcare professionals aim to formalize, improve and optimize processes by creating better clinical pathways (CPs). A CP is one of the main tools used to manage quality of healthcare and guide evidence-based medicine [1]. Medical professionals should develop pathways in an objective manner and when putting them into practice, they should deal with variances and individual care, adaptation to target population, concept drifts, and new healthcare paradigms. Using CPs in daily practices, however, should be addressed only with the right tools and techniques [2]. Considering that almost every step of clinical processes is undertaken digitally and recorded (as event logs) in information management systems, healthcare data can provide insights into the weaknesses of the system to suggest improvements. Refining the definition of CPs by exploiting healthcare data may be an appropriate way of managing healthcare processes for medical professionals. Data-driven CPs are generated by applying data mining, machine learning or statistical modeling in order to respond to performance-oriented and compliance-oriented questions of CP analysis at run-time and design time. At this point, process mining (PM) is a powerful, objective technique that has been applied in various domains including healthcare. This technique links model-based process and data-oriented analysis. In the healthcare domain, application of this technique is promising due to the growing number of reported studies [3]. PM can provide several operational insights into healthcare processes: concerning process flows, checking conformance of data with recommendations, identifying performance and waiting times in processes, and managing resource allocation. However, despite thebody of evidence on the applicability and usefulness of PM techniques in the healthcare domain, there are still significant methodological and data quality challenges that need to be addressed. Based on the need stated above and a recent literature review conducted by the same researchers [4], this article proposes a novel, PM-based process evaluation method for improving healthcare processes. This goal-oriented method aims to (1) provide a broad overview of processes in a short time, (2) create improvement opportunities for processes by incorporating domain knowledge into process enactments, (3) analyze unstructured, multidisciplinary processes like healthcare processes, (4) implement PM activities and techniques in PM methodology, and (5) provide a practical guidance for traceability, usability and functionality of PM implementations using a goal-driven approach. This method starts with the definition of the scope and creation of a table called GQFI that addresses initial project goals (G), questions (Q), features (F) and performance indicators (I) of a PM project. In the following step, event data extraction is performed based on goals and questions. Then, data is preprocessed (by modeling, filtering or abstracting) to provide a framework for interpreting it with respect to the stated goals. Following the GQFI table, the PM analysis stage is executed in which performance indicators selected for each question are measured. The results (indicators and answers to questions) are used as inputs to the following stage of evaluating process performance. Finally, process improvement opportunities are discussed and identified. The research described in this paper was undertaken by following a design science approach [5] in which artifacts were built and evaluated to meet the identified business needs [6]. In this paper, an artifact refers to a goal-driven evaluation method, and the research is divided into two stages: a design and build stage, and en evaluation stage for the constructed validation of the artifact through a case study. The feasibility of the proposed method was demonstrated with an embedded and single case study [7] involving the surgery process, and the results showed that the proposed method has potential in initiating proposals.