Toward a digital decision- and workflow-support system for initiation and control of long-term non-invasive ventilation in stable hypercapnic COPD patients.

Due to an increasing demand for the initiation and control of non-invasive ventilation (NIV), digital algorithms are suggested to support therapeutic decisions and workflows in an ambulatory setting. The DIGIVENT project established and implemented such algorithms for patients with chronic hypercapnic respiratory failure due to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) by a predefined process. Based on long-term clinical experience and guideline recommendations as provided by the German Respiratory Society, detailed graphical descriptions of how to perform NIV in stable COPD patients were created. Subsequently, these clinical workflows were implemented in the Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) as one tool to formalize these workflows serving as input for an executable digital implementation. We succeeded in creating an executable digital implementation that reflects clinical decision-making and workflows in digital algorithms. Furthermore, we built a user-friendly graphical interface that allows easy interaction with the DIGIVENT support algorithms. The DIGIVENT project established digital treatment algorithms and implemented a decision- and workflow-support system for NIV whose validation in a clinical cohort is planned.

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© The Author(s), 2022.

Déclaration de conflit d'intérêts

Conflict of interest statement: The authors declared the following potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: MD received fees for speaking and consulting from Hamilton, Heinen und Löwenstein, Linde, Philips Respironics, ResMed, and Weinmann as well as research grants from Linde, Philips Respironics, and ResMed. WW has received speaking fees from companies dealing with mechanical ventilation products. The Cologne study group (WW) has received open research grants from Weinmann/Germany, Vivisol/Germany, Löwenstein Medical/Germany, VitalAire/Germany, and Philips Respironics/USA. The remaining authors have nothing to disclose.