Systems and Constraints Diagramming Guidelines

Discuss about the Systems and Constraints Diagramming Guidelines.

Introduction

Technology and the advancements that result out from the technological processes and applications is the need of the hour. It is required for the organizations to make sure that the latest technological mechanisms are followed and reflected in all of their activities. The case is the same with the healthcare field as well. My Health Record is a project by Commonwealth Government of Australia to offer enhanced health services to the patients and end users.

My Health Record is a system that makes use of the online services and networks for offering the features and functionalities to the customers. There are several requirements and aspects that shall be covered in the application and one of the most significant out of all is the system usability. The end product that will be offered to the patients and other end users in the form of My Health Record shall be designed and developed in such a way that the specifications and requirements are met. Also, there shall be no issues with the layout and navigation included in the system (Lauesen & Younessi, 2016).

There are many non-functional requirements that can be and shall be implemented and reflected in the applications such as My Health Record. However, there are certain requirements that are mandatory and the developers and designers cannot miss out on such requirements. Reliability of My Health Record will be one such requirement that will be a mandatory aspect and will make sure that information provided to the patients is accurate and valid (Chung, 2016).

Many users such as medical staff, patients, administrator etc. may use My Health Record at the same time. The usage of the application by so many users at the same time along with the execution of operations in parallel shall not increase the response and throughput time. Such abilities will be targeted by this non-functional requirement that will be the performance of the application (Malan & Bredemeyer, 2010).

The fourth and the last non-functional requirement that is included in FURPS is the supportability of the system. The technology that is used in the development of My Health Record is dynamic in nature that is it may change and upgrade after regular intervals and the current technology may become obsolete. It will be essential that the application shall be scalable so that the change in the technology may be easily incorporated in the application (Shaikh & Misbahuddin, 2016).

My Health Record - System Interfaces

• Every user action and the request shall be acknowledged by the application. For instance, if the user accessed the application in portrait mode and switch to the landscape mode then the orientation of the application and its elements shall change accordingly. 
• The tone of colors along with the themes that are used in the application shall be subtle and completely in adherence with the field of medicine and healthcare.
• Visual appeal will be another interface that shall be included in the application with the addition of the elements such as shadow on the texts, highlights on the buttons etc.
• The patients and other end users shall be granted with the ability to make changes in the color scheme that is used (Fosse & Delp, 2016).
• Layout plays a significant role in applications such as My Health Record. Such applications shall be kept simple in terms of the layout as the patients will not be interested in the use of extensive UI elements and will look for simplicity.
• It will also be necessary to ensure that the navigation that is offered on each of the screens and pages is easy and smooth.
• A lot many variations in the application in terms of the color scheme, layout, text style etc. will lead to deterioration of user engagement. Consistency shall therefore be maintained all throughout.
• The primary aim of the application is to provide the users with the online summary of their health records and information which shall also be downloaded to their systems. These reports shall be customizable in nature.

External Systems/Devices Interfaces

• The protocol that shall be used for the exchange and sharing of message and emails shall be SMTP that is Simple Mail Transfer Protocol.
• All the medical documents and reports shall be shared from one party to the other with the use of protocol as File Transfer Protocol which is usually abbreviated as FTP.
• Networks and connectivity to these networks will be essential along with the networking equipment for ensuring non-stop connectivity and availability.
• The application will provide the patients with the ability to connect and talk to their respective medical experts with the aid of communication mediums such as tele-conferencing. Protocols and communication technologies around the same will be required to be integrated with the application.
• Medical equipment will play an important role in the quality and correctness of attributes that are provided by the patients and the results that are provided by the medical team (Conde et al., 2010).
• Healthcare information falls in to the category of confidential and sensitive information that is not something to play around with. Security and protection mechanisms will be necessary to be implemented in these applications so that the information stays safe and secure at all times and there are no occurrence of deviation or violation (Wheatcraft, 2010).
• My health record will have a front end that will be visible and accessible to the users and it shall be developed using the programming language as PHP.
• The application will have a database in the form of a back end that will be synced with the front end and it will be in the form of MySQL.
• There are various testing activities that shall be carried out and special attention shall be given to UI testing (Dettmer, 2016).

Cloud Based Solutions - Review

Cloud computing will be an integral part of My Health Record as cloud services will be utilized in the application.

There are three types of deployment models that are present in the cloud based services and solutions which are as listed below:

• Software as a Service (SaaS)
• Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
• Platform as a Service (PaaS)

The model that will fit according to the specifications and needs of My Health Record is PaaS model of cloud computing.

This model will allow My Health Record and Commonwealth Government of Australia to experience many benefits.

• The platform that will be provided under PaaS for execution of developmental activities will be secure and safe.
• There will be lesser maintenance that will be involved.
• There will not be any issues associated with data ownership and data authority and the declarations and mechanisms will come along with the PaaS model.
• There will be a lot of sharing and exchange of information that will take place in the application as My Health Record. These transitions will be safe and the data storage will be abundant.

SDLC Approach – Predictive v/s Adaptive

SDLC stands for Software Development Life Cycle. There is a life cycle that is associated with the creation of any of the software and the same will be present with My Health Record. This life cycle comprises of many phases and steps and it is essential to choose a correct approach to make sure that the aims of the software are realized.

There are primarily two categories of SDLC approach which are predictive SDLC and Adaptive SDLC. Each of these approaches comes with their own set of pros and cons.

Predictive SDLC is a methodology for the development of the software in which there are dedicated steps and phases present. This approach involves the use of detailed planning along with a specified structure and event flow. The specifications that are listed under My Health Record are defined in a proper manner and it will provide the management with the ability to carry out the tasks with utmost perfection and guidelines. Tracking of the project progress is very important as the status shall be known to the management. There is however probability that the technology and the requirements may change suddenly in case of My Health Record which will be difficult to incorporate with predictive SDLC.

The second approach which is used in case of the software development is adaptive SDLC. This is the approach that does not rely upon set patterns and steps and is based upon values. It is more of ad-hoc in nature. The requirements of My Health Record may change over a period of time on the basis of various factors such as technological framework, requirements inflation etc. It is in these scenarios that this approach will be extremely useful. There is however certain cons that are associated with every methodology and the cost may rise in case of this one. There may be a few hidden costs that may be involved. 

On the basis of the analysis that is carried out in the section above, the features of both the predictive and adaptive SDLC have been reviewed. There are certain advantages and disadvantages that are associated with each of these two approaches. The approach that is more applicable than the other in case of My Health Record is adaptive SDLC. It is because of the reason that the requirements may change and it will be essential to have an approach and guidelines in place to deal with these approaches.

Conclusion

Non-functional requirements are also known as the system qualities in the terminology of web and mobile development. My Health Record is a healthcare application that is required to possess the non-functional requirements such as system usability, system reliability, system performance and system supportability. There are mechanisms that have been defined under the design principles and UI guidelines that shall be followed in this case to make sure that the user experience resulting out from the applications is rich and has the capacity to achieve good user feedback. It will also be essential that the adaptive SDLC approach is implemented in this case as it will fit aptly to the requirements and specifications.

References

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