Clinical Practice Guidelines as a JSON Service: A Proposed Architecture for Decision Support in Major Burning Management

Authors

Keywords:

burn management, clinical decision support, clinical practice guideline, FHIR, gram quemado, JSON, microservice, knowledge formalization, REST API, document-oriented database, microservice architecture

Abstract

Clinical Practice Guidelines (CPGs) encode evidence-based clinical knowledge but are primarily distributed as unstructured PDF documents, making them inaccessible to automated clinical decision support (CDS) systems. This paper proposes a service-oriented architecture that formalizes the IMSS Clinical Practice Guideline for Major Burn Management (IMSS-375) as a versioned REST/JSON microservice. Seven clinical decision endpoints are defined, each encapsulating a specific GPC recommendation: burn classification, initial assessment, fluid resuscitation, pain management, infection prevention, nutritional support, and transfer criteria, following HL7 FHIR R4 interoperability standards. A mapping between GPC clinical rules (including the Parkland formula, Benaim scale, Curreri formula, and Baux prognostic index) and structured JSON request/response schemas is presented and evaluated against related formalization approaches and verified through structured schema-level invocations against a representative clinical scenario, including a detailed comparison of Mexico IMSS-375 standard properties against HL7 FHIR and OpenEHR. A deployment architecture is described covering hospital-level integration, a centralized service layer, and a non-relational persistence tier based on document-oriented storage for unstructured clinical data.

 

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Author Biographies

Jesus Ramirez, Universidad de Guadalajara

Jesús Ramírez received the B.S. degree in software engineering from the Instituto Tecnológico de Sonora, Sonora, Mexico, in 2016, and the M.S. degree in information technology from the University of Guadalajara, Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico, in 2024. His major field of study includes software engineering, project management, and technological integration. He is currently pursuing research in the development of computational models for the classification and analysis of burn injuries.

Rocio Maciel, Universidad de Guadalajara

Rocío Maciel is responsible for outreach and talent management at the Center for Innovation in Smart Cities at the University of Guadalajara. She has extensive experience in educational processes, particularly in online learning modalities, and has promoted such programs at the University of Guadalajara and the Secretariat of Education of Jalisco, reaching more than 10,000 users. She holds a Doctorate and a Master’s degree in Administration and Teaching Methodology from the Instituto Mexicano de Estudios Pedagógicos (IMEP). She has more than 25 years of experience in Information Technologies, having served as Director of Information Technology, Coordinator of the Graphic Design area, Coordinator of the Bachelor’s Degree in Information Systems, Legal Consultant, and Technical-Pedagogical Advisor.

Victor Larios, Universidad de Guadalajara

Victor Larios received his Ph.D. and a DEA (French version of an MS program) in Computer Science at the Technological University of Compiegne, France, and a BA in Electronics Engineering at the ITESO University in Guadalajara, Mexico. He works at the University of Guadalajara (UDG) and holds a Full Professor-Researcher position at the Department of Information Systems where he is the Director of the Smart Cities Innovation Center at the CUCEA UDG Campus. Additionally, Dr. Larios is the founder of the UDG Ph.D. in Information Technologies in 2007 and leads projects in the Guadalajara academia, government and High Technology Industry local ecosystem (including IBM, Intel, and HPE), focusing on Distributed Systems, IoT, Data Analytics and Visualization, Serious Games and Smart Cities.

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Published

2026-07-14

How to Cite

Alvarez Ramirez, J. de J., Maciel, R., & Larios, V. (2026). Clinical Practice Guidelines as a JSON Service: A Proposed Architecture for Decision Support in Major Burning Management. IEEE Latin America Transactions, 24(9), 927–936. Retrieved from https://latamt.ieeer9.org/index.php/transactions/article/view/10745

Issue

Vol. 24 No. 9 (2026): Ordinary Issue

Section

Computing