Requirements Engineering for Inter-Organizational Health Information Systems with Functions for Spatial Analyses: Modeling a WHO Safe Community Applying Use Case Maps

Summary

Objectives: To evaluate Use Case Maps (UCMs) as a technique for Requirements Engineering (RE) in the development of information systems with functions for spatial analyses in inter-organizational public health settings.

Methods: In this study, Participatory Action Research (PAR) is used to explore the UCM notation for requirements elicitation and to gather the opinions of the users. The Delphi technique is used to reach consensus in the construction of UCMs.

Results: The results show that UCMs can provide a visualization of the system‘s functionality and in combination with PAR provide a sound basis for gathering requirements in inter-organizational settings. UCMs were found to represent a suitable level for describing the organization and the dynamic flux of information including spatial resolution to all stakeholders. Moreover, by using PAR, the voices of the users and their tacit knowledge is intercepted. Further, UCMs are found useful in generating intuitive requirements by the creation of use cases.

Conclusions: With UCMs and PAR it is possible to study the effects of design changes in the general information display and the spatial resolution in the same context. Both requirements on the information system in general and the functions for spatial analyses are possible to elicit when identifying the different responsibilities and the demands on spatial resolution associated to the actions of each administrative unit. However, the development process of UCM is not well documented and needs further investigation and formulation of guidelines.

Keywords

Health informatics - public health - system development - requirements engineering (RE) - case study methods

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