Analyzing clinical processes and detecting potential correlation between CKD and air pollution

Noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) are the most common causes of morbidity and premature mortality worldwide. The National Chronicity Plan of the Italian Minis-try of Health classified Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) as a chronic disease with a significant level of criticality, highlighting that its management has to be conducted through information systems. To this aim, starting from the clinical data collected within the database of the Department of Nephrology, Dialysis and Transplantation (Annunziata Hospital - Cosenza - Italy), we carried out a propaedeutic analysis of the clinical procedures which are commonly adopted in the care process of CKD defining all procedural flows through process modelling techniques. Furthermore, all clinical data analysed, as it has been reported that environmental pollutants can potentially increase the risk of CKD or accelerate its progression, have been used to define a distribution map over the Calabria Region in order to detect the potential correlation between CKD and air pollution.