Developing a taxonomy of communication errors in heterogeneous information systems.
BACKGROUND
Although established communication standards do exist in the health care domain (i.e., DICOM and HL7) the communication within heterogeneous information systems still shows a variety of errors. The complexity of these systems aggravates the identification of error reasons. A structured summary of communication errors and their reasons is essential for developing methods that support the error detection.


METHODS
In order to summarize communication errors, a systematic literature review in PubMed was conducted. Selected references were filtered iteratively and analyzed by applying subsuming qualitative content analysis.


RESULTS
The taxonomy currently contains 12 different problem classes that group 42 problems, with in total 130 reasons.


CONCLUSIONS
Although, not all selected literature references are yet analyzed, we observe a saturation concerning new errors/error classes. In order to increase validity and completeness expert interviews are in planning stage. However, the first results are promising.
Saboor
Samrend
S
Institute for Health Information Systems, UMIT - University for Health Sciences, Medical Informatics and Technology, Hall in Tyrol, Austria. Samrend.Saboor@umit.at
Ammenwerth
Elske
E
D002965:Classification; D003195:Computer Communication Networks; D006801:Humans; D050316:Medical Order Entry Systems; D011786:Quality Control; D012107:Research Design