Abstract
Objective: Retrospective evaluation of clinical pathway adherence using electronic medical record (eMR) data is limited by heterogeneous data structures and statistical measures that do not account for patient-specific context, care sequence, or timing. We designed a modular event-based architecture to dynamically evaluate the New South Wales Adult Sepsis Pathway over time.
Method: Data from eMRs were collected from adult emergency department encounters across four hospitals between July 2022 and June 2024 and processed through three sequential layers: event-stream transformation, pathway-relevance filtering, and state-based pathway evaluation. Heterogeneous records were standardized and organized into a chronological timeline for each encounter. The framework then updated the pathway state as new clinical information became available and assessed whether recommended care was delivered within the relevant timeframe and sequence.
Result: The architecture processed 451,124 encounters. This included 57,631,084 clinical events extracted and transformed into encounter-level event streams. After filtering for pathway relevance, 43,951,146 events remained (76.3%). A total of 129,907 (34.6%) encounters entered the sepsis pathway, 50,118 (38.6%) entered YELLOW state, indicating progression to suspected sepsis, and 3,349 (2.6%) encounters progressed to RED state from GREEN, indicating the initial shock. Of 50,118 encounters entering YELLOW state, 2,426 (4.8%) progressed to shock, 8,700 (17.4%) encounters were recognized with sepsis through a blood culture order, and 4,287 (8.6%) encounters were recognized with sepsis through an antibiotic order. This demonstrates the ability of the architecture to prioritize higher-acuity states during evaluation rather than going through an intermediate state.
Conclusion: The architecture developed shows the feasibility of transforming fragmented routine eMR data into a reusable longitudinal representation that supports context-dependent pathway evaluation. Separating data preparation from pathway rules improves transparency, maintainability, and adaptability and provides a foundation for future interoperable, near-real-time pathway monitoring