An object-modeling method for hospital information systems.
Our goal is to increase the software productivity of hospital information systems (HISs) by applying object-oriented technologies. We propose a new object-modeling method for HISs that combines three general methods--an object modeling technique (OMT), class responsibilities collaboration (CRC) cards, and a use-case approach--to extract objects effectively. Our method also takes HIS functionality characteristics such as history and patient-staff linking into consideration to increase the reusability of objects. To test this method, we applied it to several HISs such as a drug-history system, a nursing-support system and an electronic patient record (EPR). We found that the software productivity of the drug-history system was more than doubled by using the combined method. Also, more than 40% of the logic classes could be reused in the nursing-support system and EPR. These findings confirmed that the proposed method can significantly increase the software productivity of HISs.
Seto
K
K
Central Research Laboratory, Hitachi, Ltd, Tokyo, Japan. kumiko@crl.hitachi.co.jp
Kamiyama
T
T
Matsuo
H
H
D016303:Clinical Pharmacy Information Systems; D005069:Evaluation Studies as Topic; D006751:Hospital Information Systems; D006801:Humans; D016347:Medical Records Systems, Computerized; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D012984:Software