Automated data collection and dashboard development:enhancing quality monitoring and analysis

Abstract. This master thesis focuses on optimizing software quality analysis at target projects in Elektrobit, a key player in the automotive software industry. In the light of continuous technological advancements in the industry, maintaining high-quality software is imperative. Current verification procedures, though effective, are time-consuming and often entail a significant amount of manual work. Additionally, the absence of efficient visualization tools leads to missed opportunities for improvement. I proposed an automated quality data collection process and a user-friendly visualization system, designed to streamline the process of software quality analysis. The solution is delivered in the form of an interactive dashboard, offering a centralized view of all pertinent quality metrics data, thereby saving time, reducing manual work, and improving user experience. The study employs a design science research (DSR) methodology, focusing on iterative design, implementation, and evaluation. The findings from the evaluation confirm the dashboard’s efficacy and relevance, illustrating its value in enhancing efficiency, productivity, and team collaboration. The user-centered design approach and regular user engagement during development proved to be instrumental in achieving these results. The research acknowledges certain limitations, such as the proof-of-concept stage of the dashboard and the relatively small user feedback group and suggests potential areas for future work. In conclusion, this research serves as a testament to the transformative potential of automated data collection and effective visualization systems in the software quality analysis domain, contributing to both theory and practice

An analysis of the effects of certified electronic health records on organizations and patients.

The growing technological advancement of electronic health records can become an issue with quality and electronic patient information exchange if hospitals do not adhere to federal guidelines. It is recommended that hospitals utilize certified electronic health records (EHRs) to receive financial incentives. This certification is supposedly also associated with the quality of the EHR itself. The certification process is criticized for allowing EHR vendors to meet a set of limited functions known in advance. EHRs can affect healthcare quality and electronic health information exchange. This dissertation explored what is known about the effects of certified EHRs on length of stay (LOS) and patient generated health data (PGHD), the relationship between hospital utilization of certified EHRs and LOS, and the relationship between hospital utilization of certified EHRs with hospital capability of allowing the function of PGHD. The first analysis was a scoping review guided by the PRISMA protocol to explore what is known of the effects of certified EHRs on LOS and PGHD. The second analysis used datasets from the American Hospital Association Survey and Information Technology Supplement and Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services, Office of Health Policy from 2015 to 2019 to understand the relationship between hospital utilization of certified EHRs and LOS through a fixed effects regression model. The final paper analysis used datasets from the American Hospital Association Survey and Information Technology Supplement from 2016 to 2020 to understand the relationship between hospital utilization of certified EHRs and the function of enabling PGHD through a binary logistic regression. There is support amongst researchers on EHRs improving quality, such as, LOS and the function of PGHD improving technology efficiency and others supporting EHRs with more customization and open architecture. There is less known about whether an EHR, certified or non-certified, are different from one another with providing advantages for hospitals. Hospitals with certified EHRs have a longer LOS compared to hospitals with non-certified EHRs. Most hospitals experienced barriers with receiving, sending, or other electronic information exchange. Most hospitals with certified EHRs were more likely to not enable the function for PGHD compared to hospitals with non-certified EHRs. EHRs can be problematic while hospitals are providing hospital care. Although most hospitals possess certified EHRs, most do not enable the function of PGHD. Secondary sources from the survey were completed by the Chief Technology Officer or Chief Information Officer. Further research could be continued with understanding different groups’ health effects with health information technology. Hospitals may be satisfied with their EHRs but not as abreast on how functional the EHR is and how the EHR can benefit patients

mHealth Technology: Towards a New Persuasive Mobile Application for Caregivers That Addresses Motivation and Usability

With the increasing use of mobile technologies and smartphones, new methods of promoting personal health have been developed. For example, there is now software for recording and tracking one\u27s exercise activity or blood pressure. Even though there are already many of these services, the mobile health field still presents many opportunities for new research. One apparent area of need would be software to support the efforts of caregivers for the elderly, especially those who suffer from multiple chronic conditions, such as cognitive impairment, chronic heart failure or diabetes. Very few mobile applications (apps) have been created that target caregivers of the elderly and most seem to be limited to a single condition or to creating generic to-do lists or tracking medications. None seem to address the complex tracking of multiple chronic conditions, nor one of the key difficulties found with written checklists for this population, namely that caregivers quit recording health information regularly as time passes. This dissertation will explore methods for improving the consistency of usage of health tracking software for the caregivers of the elderly with multiple chronic conditions by creating designs that explicitly address the context and motivations of caregivers. This work will assess a number of existing approaches and provide a design and a prototype for a new motivating application to help the caregivers of patients with multiple chronic conditions. It will assess how well the tool seems to address factors associated with intrinsic motivation (e.g. autonomy, competence, relatedness, and feedback). The overall usability of the software application will also be addressed, following guidelines from ISO standards and Nielsen’s theories

MS

thesisTo conduct clinical research, data are needed from the clinical routine. Due to the complexity of today's Healthcare Information Systems (HIS), clinical researchers oftentimes struggle finding relevant information. As part of the reengineering efforts of the clinical data warehouse towards a translational enterprise data warehouse, a general methodology is developed to describe the complexity of current HIS in all domains, to guide researchers with a clinical questions to the dta they need, and thus to increase accessibility of clinical data for research. An information-requirements analysis was conducted with clinical researchers and data warehouse experts in the domain of pharmacy as groundwork for a new translational meta-model. The results of this analysis were used adapt the strategic HIS management meta-model 3LGM2 and to implement it into the domain of pharmacy. The new translational meta-model consists of a domain-, a logical tool-, and a data description-layer with interlayer relationships. Two further layers, added in a perpendicular way give information about access and quality. This meta-model is implemented as a Web-based solution, providing modeling and browsing functionality. The presented translation meta-data solution shows a promising approach to the problem of clinical data access in research. Further research in needed to prove its applicability and usefulness in the daily routine

Developing a distributed electronic health-record store for India

The DIGHT project is addressing the problem of building a scalable and highly available information store for the Electronic Health Records (EHRs) of the over one billion citizens of India

ASPECT-ORIENTED SOFTWARE QUALITY MODEL: THE AOSQ MODEL

ABSTRAC

Design systems at work: Optimizing design processes and aligning design work to company identity

User experience design in a company setting typically involves teams comprised of individuals with diverse roles, who need to collaborate when creating products and services. Resources exist to set standards for design within such a company, guiding teams of designers and developers to create products and services with a consistent look and feel that are also in line with the company’s branding. These resources include UX guidelines, UI style guides, design patterns, and design languages. The latest such resource is the design system. This thesis explores the term design system in terms of its definition and how it is applied by design professionals within companies. It seeks to understand how to define the term and how to create a design system to support the needs of a company’s design teams, and ultimately, provide a pleasant and consistent experience for end users. Following this focus on design in practice, the literature review has a heavy emphasis on articles and blog entries by working designers explaining what design systems are to them, how they have built them, and how they use them. This is complemented by academic literature on topics related to collaborative work in digital product teams, design management, and storytelling methods to drive adoption within companies. Expert interviews were also conducted with design professionals who have led design system teams in organizations. The literature review and expert interviews revealed a definition for design system that is not standardized, yet fairly consistent from speaker to speaker. Design systems broadly encompass the early types of standardizations for design. They include design languages, guidelines, and style guides. They go even further by not only establishing standards for how designs should look and lead to interactions. Design systems also provide the philosophy behind the design decisions that were made, relating them to the company’s mission and branding. This thesis also contains a case study with the global engineering company ABB, tracing the beginning of its central design team and transition from a UI style guide to a design system. Designers and developers throughout the company were surveyed and interviewed to hear their needs and expectations. Service design approaches were used to conduct participatory research with stakeholders within the company, with the aim of engaging them in the process of creating a design system. Implications on a company level, industry level, and academic level are discussed. This thesis on design systems supports the case company ABB in creating its design system, and on a broader scale, connects academic and industry discussions on collaborative work in design teams to explain how design systems can be built and used

Generating collaborative systems for digital libraries: A model-driven approach

This is an open access article shared under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/). Copyright @ 2010 The Authors.The design and development of a digital library involves different stakeholders, such as: information architects, librarians, and domain experts, who need to agree on a common language to describe, discuss, and negotiate the services the library has to offer. To this end, high-level, language-neutral models have to be devised. Metamodeling techniques favor the definition of domainspecific visual languages through which stakeholders can share their views and directly manipulate representations of the domain entities. This paper describes CRADLE (Cooperative-Relational Approach to Digital Library Environments), a metamodel-based framework and visual language for the definition of notions and services related to the development of digital libraries. A collection of tools allows the automatic generation of several services, defined with the CRADLE visual language, and of the graphical user interfaces providing access to them for the final user. The effectiveness of the approach is illustrated by presenting digital libraries generated with CRADLE, while the CRADLE environment has been evaluated by using the cognitive dimensions framework