BIT Pathways – a tool for teaching and learning clinical pathways

The primary objective of clinical pathways is to improve the quality of healthcare and to reduce variations and costs, however they also have the potential to be used as an efficient learning resource. Their introduction can help medical professionals to keep their knowledge up-to-date and to better learn their roles and responsibilities in a hospital. >>mipp> is a clinical pathway project undertaken at the Aarau Canton Hospital in Switzerland. Existing >>mipp> tools have been extended to support better dissemination of clinical pathways in the hospital and to serve also as an educational tool. Newly implemented authoring and visualization tool – BIT Pathways – has made it possible to develop pathways easily. The tool may be used outside the Aarau Canton Hospital for educational purposes. A group of 47 multidisciplinary postgraduate students has preliminarily tested the software with encouraging results.