Abstract:
Insufficient requirements analysis has recently been suggested as a problem in clinical
decision-support systems development. Therefore, to explore knowledge, practices and
attitudes, key professionals in the area from four countries were interviewed regarding
the early phases in the development process. For data collection, semi-structured
interviews were performed and video-taped. As reference, documentation of the Action
Design requirements engineering methodology was used. Two separate qualitative analyses
of the data were made. The first was to identify central concepts and attitudes related
to requirements engineering. In the second anlysis, concrete circumstances surrounding
decisions to use requirements engineering methods were investigated. This paper reports
the results of the analyses and discusses changes in the planning and management of
clinical decision-support projects in general, and it comments on development methods,
using Action Design as reference. It is concluded that studies are needed to further
investigate the problems real decision-support projects have to deal with. This knowledge
can then be used to develop methods and tools which support design practices where
existing structural, procedural and, building on this, technical obstacles are overcome.
Keywords
Decision Support Systems - Requirements Engineering - Systems Development - Qualitative
Evaluation - Participatory Design.
