Goal-driven development of a patient surveillance application for improving patient safety

Abstract

Hospitals strive to improve the safety of their patients. Yet, every year, thousands of patients suffer from adverse events, which are defined as undesirable outcomes caused by health care business processes. There are few tools supporting adverse event detection and these are ineffective. There is hence some urgency in developing such a tool in a way that complies with the organizations goals and privacy legislation. In addition, governments will soon require hospitals to report on adverse events. In this paper, we will show how a pilot application we developed contributes to the patient safety goals of a major teaching hospital and how our goal-driven approach supported the collaboration between the university researchers and hospital decision makers involved. Benefits and challenges related to the modeling of requirements, goals, and processes, and to the development of the application itself, are also discussed. © 2009 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.