Software Engineering for Health Care and Biomedicine
After reading this chapter, you should know the answers to these questions:
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Software Engineering for Health Care and Biomedicine Adam B. Wilcox, Scott P. Narus, and David K. Vawdrey
After reading this chapter, you should know the answers to these questions: • What key functions do software applications perform in health care? • How are the components of the software development life cycle applied to health care? • What are the trade-offs between purchasing commercial, off-the-shelf systems and developing custom applications? • What are important considerations in comparing commercial software products? • Why do systems in health care, both internallydeveloped and commercially-purchased, require continued software development?
6.1
How Can a Computer System Help in Health Care?
Chapter 5 discusses basic concepts related to computer and communications hardware and software. In this chapter, we focus on the software
A.B. Wilcox, PhD (*) • S.P. Narus, PhD Department of Medical Informatics, Intermountain Healthcare, 5171 South Cottonwood St, Murray, UT 84107, USA e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] D.K. Vawdrey, PhD Department of Biomedical Informatics, Columbia University, 622 W. 168th Street, VC-5, New York, NY10032, USA e-mail: [email protected]
applications and components of health care information systems, and describe how they are used and applied to support health care delivery. We give examples of some basic functions that may be performed by health information systems, and discuss important considerations in how the software may be acquired, implemented and used. This understanding of how a system gets put to use in health care settings will help as you read about the various specific applications in the chapters that follow. Health care is an information-intensive field. Clinicians are constantly collecting, gathering, reviewing, analyzing and communicating information from many sources to make decisions. Humans are complex, and individuals have many different characteristics that are relevant to health care and that need to be considered in decisionmaking. Health care is complex, with a huge body of existing knowledge that is expanding at ever-increasing rates. Health care information software is intended to facilitate the use of this information at various points in the delivery process. Software defines how data are obtained, organized and processed to yield information. Software, in terms of design, development, acquisition, configuration and maintenance, is therefore a major component of the field. Here we
The authors gratefully acknowledge the co-authors of the previous chapter edition titled “System Design and Engineering in Health Care,” GioWiederhold and Edward H. Shortliffe.
E.H. Shortliffe, J.J. Cimino (eds.), Biomedical Informatics, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4471-4474-8_6, © Springer-Verlag London 2014
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provide an introduction to the practical considerations regarding health information software. This includes both understanding of general software engineering principles, and then specifically how these principle
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