Health Care Information Systems: A Crisis Approach

Abstract

During the 1st Semester of 2017, at the BrazilianAeronautics Institute of Technology (Instituto Tecnologico de Aeronautica, ITA), a successful Interdisciplinary Problem-Based Learning (IPBL) experience took place. At that time, almost 30 undergraduate and graduate students from three different courses within just 17 academic weeks had the opportunity of conceptualizing, modeling, and developing a Computer System based on Big Data, Internet of Things, and other emerging technologies for governmental organizations and private sectors. The purpose of this system was to aggregate data and integrate actors, such as Patients, Hospitals, Physicians, and Suppliers for decision making processes related to crises management involving events of health systems, such as epidemics, that needs to manage data and information. Differently from other existing products from Universities, Research Centers, Governmental Agencies, Public and/or Private companies, this product was developed and tested in just 17 academic weeks, applying the Scrum agile method and its best practices available in the market. This experience was stored in a Google site and implemented as a Proof of Concept (PoC). It represents just one example of how to address the old problems of teaching, learning, and developing complex intelligent academic computer projects to solve health system problems, by collaboratively using the Scrum agile method with Python or Java, Spark, NoSQL databases, Kafka, and other technologies. The major contribution of this paper is the use of agile testing to verify and validate an academic health system case study.