Development Of A Formal Framework For Usable Operations Support In E-Health Based Systems

ABSTRACT

This study uses advanced communications and computing technologies to support health care delivery and education. The automated e-Health-based system was designed to eliminate clumsy and tedious treatment procedures associated with manual treatment processes prevalent in care centres, especially in the developing countries. The operations support functionalities of the system are provided within a formal framework to eliminate system errors, improve dependability and enhance its usability. The framework presented in this thesis uses algebraic specifications in object constraint language (OCL) and Unified Modelling Language (UML) in the analysis and design of some subsystems in an e-Health based system. Wireless Markup Language (WML) and Java programming language were used to develop the operations support functionality with real-time access to medical information via hand-held devices. The application was deployed on a 3-tiered client / server architecture with hand-held devices as clients, providing mobile access to real-time information from server-based systems within a care centre. The system was evaluated empirically and analytically. The application’s usability evaluation was done using a questionnaire based on the attributes suggested by ISO, ANSI and ITU. The product was found to be usable with a mean rating above 4 on a scale of 5 for all attributes used for the measurement. The study revealed that 92% of the medical professionals who evaluated the application would like to see it deployed for use in medical centres in order to enhance health care delivery.