A medical prescription is a set of health care instructions that govern the plan of care for an individual patient, which may include orders for drug therapy, diet, clinical assessment, and laboratory testing. Clinicians have long used algorithmic thinking to describe and implement prescriptions but without the benefit of a formal programming language. Instead, medical algorithms are expressed using a natural language patois, flowcharts, or as structured data in an electronic medical record system. The lack of a prescription programming language inhibits expressiveness; results in prescriptions that are difficult to understand, hard to debug, and awkward to reuse; and increases the risk of fatal medical error. This article reports on the design and evaluation of Patient-Oriented Prescription Programming Language (POP-PL), a domain-specific programming language designed for expressing prescriptions. The language is based around the idea that programs and humans have complementary strengths that, when combined properly, can make for safer, more accurate performance of prescriptions. Use of POP-PL facilitates automation of certain low-level vigilance tasks, freeing up human cognition for abstract thinking, compassion, and human communication. We implemented this language and evaluated its design attempting to write prescriptions in the new language and evaluated its usability by assessing whether clinicians can understand and modify prescriptions written in the language. We found that some medical prescriptions can be expressed in a formal domain-specific programming language, and we determined that medical professionals can understand and correctly modify programs written in POP-PL. We also discuss opportunities for refining and further developing POP-PL.

中文翻译：

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POP-PL

医疗处方是一组医疗保健说明，用于管理个别患者的护理计划，其中可能包括药物治疗、饮食、临床评估和实验室检测的命令。临床医生长期以来一直使用算法思维来描述和实施处方，但没有使用正式的编程语言。相反，医学算法使用自然语言方言、流程图或电子病历系统中的结构化数据来表达。缺乏处方编程语言会抑制表达能力；导致难以理解、难以调试和难以重用的处方；并增加致命医疗错误的风险。本文报道了面向患者的处方编程语言（POP-PL）的设计和评估，一种特定于领域的编程语言，旨在表达处方。该语言基于这样一种观点，即程序和人类具有互补优势，如果结合得当，可以使处方更安全、更准确。POP-PL 的使用促进了某些低级警戒任务的自动化，解放了人类的认知，以进行抽象思维、同情和人类交流。我们实施了这种语言并评估了它的设计，试图用新语言编写处方，并通过评估临床医生是否可以理解和修改用这种语言编写的处方来评估其可用性。我们发现一些医疗处方可以用正式的领域特定编程语言表达，我们确定医疗专业人员可以理解并正确修改用 POP-PL 编写的程序。我们还讨论了改进和进一步发展 POP-PL 的机会。