Enhancing requirements engineering for patient registry software systems with evidence-based components

Providing a framework for evaluation disease registry and health outcomes Software: Updating the CIPROS checklist

BACKGROUND AND AIMS

Properly designed and implemented registry systems play an important role in improving health outcomes and reducing care costs, and can provide a true representation of clinical practice, disease outcomes, safety, and efficacy. Therefore, the aim of this study was to redesign and develop a checklist with items for a patient registry software system (CIPROS) Checklist.

METHOD

The study is descriptive-cross-sectional. The extraction of the data elements of the checklist was first done through a comprehensive review of the texts in PubMed, Science Direct and Scopus databases and receiving articles related to the evaluation of registry systems. Based on the extracted data, a five-point Likert scale questionnaire was created and 30 experts in this field were asked for their opinions using the two-step Delphi method.

RESULTS

A total of 100 information items were determined as a registry software evaluation checklist. This checklist included 12 groups of software architecture factors, development, interfaces and interactivity, semantics and standardization, internationality, data management, data quality and usability, data analysis, security, privacy, organizational, education and public factors.

CONCLUSION

By using the results of this research, it is possible to identify the defects and possible strengths of the registry software and put it at the disposal of the relevant officials to make a decision in this field. In this way, among the designers and developers of these softwares, the best and most appropriate ones are selected with the needs of the registry programs.

Comprehensive evaluation of software system reliability based on component-based generalized G-O models

The component-based software system has a core that is based on architecture design. Predicting the reliability growth trends of a software system in the early stages of the development process is conducive to reducing waste and loss caused by blind development. Restricted by the lack of information and data in the design and integration phase, it is difficult to implement reliability prediction research at this stage. In this article, we focus on a software system in which the reliability of each component follows the G-O model. First, two system-level parameters, which are the total number of system faults and the detection rate of the system faults, are defined. Then, by studying the relationship between the total number of faults and the detection rate of faults between the components and the system, the defined system parameters are calculated from the known component parameters. On this basis, and by incorporating the system parameters, we construct a reliability growth model for the software system, called the component-based generalized G-O model (CB-GGOM). Besides, two approximate models of CB-GGOM are proposed to facilitate reliability evaluation of the software system in the early and stable stages of the integration test. An engineering explanation of the proposed models is also provided, and their effectiveness is verified through simulation and with an authentic example. Since the proposed models are formulated without any integration test data, they are beneficial for developers to optimize test strategies of the software system and implement defect prevention in advance.

Development and validation of the Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome Minimum Data Set (NAS-MDS): a systematic review, focus group discussion, and Delphi technique

OBJECTIVES

Neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS) is a combination of symptoms in infants exposed to any variety of substances in utero. Information systems and registries help to collect information about these patients; however, there is always a deep gap between complete and accurate information to be collected, understood, and applied in the health care system; thus, defining a minimum data sets (MDS) as one of the primarily steps of designing a registry system is essential. The aim of this study was to develop an MDS of the registry for infants with NAS in Iran.

METHODS

This research is a descriptive cross-sectional study. In this study, three steps were carried out to develop the MDS including systematic review, Delphi technique, and focus group discussion. A systematic review was conducted in relevant databases to identify appropriate related data. In the second phase, a focus group discussion was used to classify the extracted data elements by contributing neonatologists. Finally, data elements were chosen through the decision Delphi technique in two distinct rounds. Collected data were analyzed using SPSS 22 (SPSS Inc., Chicago, IL).

RESULTS

By reviewing related papers and available NAS registries in other countries, 145 essential data elements were identified. They were classified into two main categories based on the eight experts' opinions including maternal with two sections and infant with two sections. After applying two rounds of Delphi technique, the final data elements for maternal and infant categories were 42 and 31, respectively. Thus, on completion of the survey, 73 data elements were approved.

CONCLUSION

The proposed MDS for NAS can help to store an accurate and comprehensive data, document medical records, integrate them with other information systems and registries, and communicate with other healthcare providers and healthcare centers. This MDS can contribute to the provision of high-quality care and better clinical decisions.

Data for the elaboration of the CIPROS checklist with items for a patient registry software system: Examples and explanations

The data presented relates to the publication "Enhancing Requirements Engineering for Patient Registry Software Systems with Evidence-based Components" (Lindoerfer and Mansmann, 2017) [1], which describes the strategy behind the development of the CIPROS checklist. This manuscript also compares CIPROS with general requirements specification templates, and standards. The data is shortly described in Section 2.4 and presented in . The examples represent the material extracted from the literature used in qualitative analysis. The explanations summarize the example contents from which the CIPROS checklist was created. Patient registries are a crucial part of medical research. High quality registries use efficient information systems software selected from a wide variety of existing software solutions. An efficient selection process requires focused selection criteria. The evidence-based CIPROS checklist [2] accelerates this requirements engineering process. CIPROS was developed in a multistep procedure: (1) A systematic literature review provided an exhaustive collection of relevant publications (64 articles), (2) a catalogue of relevant criteria was derived by a qualitative content analysis, and (3) the checklist containing 72 items was composed which provides a minimal appraisal standard. The data presented per checklist item provide the relevant textual information (examples) and a first qualitative summary (explanation). The examples and explanations provide the background information on CIPROS. They elucidate how to implement the checklist items in other projects. The literature list and the selected texts serve as a reference for scientists and system developers.