Health Records And Health Summary That Is Associated

Difference between External Systems or Devices of Health Record?

 

Introduction

There have been many revolutions, advancements and transformations that have taken place in the field of technology with the increase of innovation. There is a great advancement in terms of automation and digitalization that has been done. The impact of the same is viable and visible in every sector on a global scale. Healthcare is also a sector that did not refrain from adapting the technological changes and included the same in its requirements so as to emerge as an innovative and technically advanced sector. Commonwealth Government of Australia has always made sure that it remains at pace with the technology and the advancements in the field of technology. One of such examples is My Health Record that provides a summary of the health details of the patients on an application that is available on cloud.

System Qualities (Non-Functional Requirements)

There are primarily three types of requirements that an application is required to fulfill which include functional requirements, non-functional requirements and user requirements. Functional requirements are associated with the features of the system such as its functionalities that will be included. Non-functional requirements on the other hand are the system qualities that shall be reflected in the system to make sure that the qualities such as usability, reliability, performance and supportability are present in the system.

Usability of My Health Record

As described above, there are certain system qualities that must be present in the system. These qualities shall be present in My Health Record as well to make sure that the user expectations are met and the level of satisfaction is achieved. One of the important system qualities is the usability of the system (Lauesen & Younessi, 2016). There are many functional aspects that are present in My Health Record for the patients and for the medical staff members. Absence of any of these functional aspects will lead to the emergence of problems such as issues in the user experience that is achieved from the system. It is therefore required that the usability of the system is maintained and the functional aspects as described under the specifications are included. There shall also be adherence to the design principles that shall be maintained such as easy layout, simple navigation along with the customized color themes.  

Reliability of My Health Record

Health records and health summary that is associated with the system shall be displayed correctly and accurately. There cannot be any loopholes present in the health information that is associated with the patients. There can be fatal occurrences because of the reason. The non-functional requirement that shall be included in the system shall be the reliability of the system (Chung, 2016). There are many information sets that are present in My Health Record such as details that are fed by the users, analysis that is provided by the medical staff and likewise. The requests that the end users will place in the system will be required to be done in such a manner that it yields valid information at all times.

Performance of My Health Record

Automated systems that are created for the organizations are done in such a manner that the response that is given to the user requests is quick (Malan & Bredemeyer, 2010). Any delays in the response or the processing speed will not be acceptable as the speed of operations is considered as the prime quality to be maintained by the automated systems. The case is the same with My Health Record and it will be necessary that a quick response is provided to any of the user requests of queries. System performance will therefore be required to be implemented in My Health Record. There may also be situation wherein the user may be experiencing an emergency health situation. In such cases, system performance will have a vital role to play as immediate alerts will be generated.

Supportability of My Health Record

Technology and the technical aspects that are associated with the systems and applications are changing rapidly. There are new and innovative technologies that are coming up in the market and these technologies are extremely dynamic in nature. The technical infrastructure that is associated with My Health Record may change suddenly. The technology that is implemented may soon become obsolete. It will therefore be necessary to have the elements of supportability and scalability in this system so that the changes can be met with ease (Shaikh & Misbahuddin, 2016).

System Interfaces

User Interfaces of My Health Record

• Users would want to feel connected with the application. It will therefore be necessary that the connectivity is maintained with My Health Record. It will be required to provide the response to the user requests and actions adequately for which the design and the user interface shall include the elements of responsive web design.  
• It will not be recommended that there is overuse of colors in the application as it belongs to the field of healthcare. At the same time, the application shall also not have dull and plain colors used. The use of colors should be a perfect mix such that they give a soothing appeal to the application.
• The buttons, labels, text elements and other UI elements that are present on the application shall acknowledge the use action with response such as highlights, shadows, change of colors etc.
• Some users may like the color tone and scheme that is implemented in the application while there may be certain users that may prefer other color scheme and tone. There shall be an option provided to the users to customize the color scheme that is used (Fosse & Delp, 2016).
• Consistency is considered as a prime application and it shall reflect and be present in My Health Record as well. The presence of elements such as use of colors and the layout on the screens of the applications shall maintain consistency. There shall not be cases wherein one screen in the application is colored in one color and another screen is colored in another color.
• The application will have many screens such as login, health summary, health report etc. Any of these screens shall not have overloaded navigation. At the same time, the transition from one screen to the other shall also be smooth and hassle free.
• There will be a lot of text content present on the application which will be written in a specific font face, color and size. There shall be consistency maintained in terms of these elements as well.
• The medical reports that will be sent by the medical experts and practitioners will be provided to the users in the form of a summary. The patients will also have the capability to extract this summary from the system. The downloaded reports shall have the option of customization in terms of the contents and the format.

External Systems or Devices Interfaces of My Health Record

• There will be exchange of emails between the patients or their families and the medical team which shall be implemented and carried out by the protocol as Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP).
• There will be many files that will be necessary to be sent from one entity to the other. For instance, the medical team will provide the comments in the form of e-documents. Sharing capability will be required which will be fulfilled by File Transfer Protocol which is abbreviated as FTP. 
• Networks will play an important role in this case as the entire functioning will depend upon the capacity and capability of the networks. Connectivity to the networks through Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and User Datagram Protocol (UDP) shall be done.
• Communication technologies and standards such as MPEG4, JPEG2 and Real Time Protocol (RTP) will be required for supporting the abilities for tele conferencing in the application.
• Medical equipment will be used by the patients to feed their health records. This information will be fed in through the aid of medical equipment that shall be connected and made compatible with the application (Conde et al., 2010).
• Security protocols will be necessary and will play a significant role in My Health Record. The application shall therefore comprise of the protocols that ensure the protection and safety of information (Wheatcraft, 2010).

System Constraints of My Health Record

• My Health Record shall have a front end for providing the application interface to the users which shall be coded in PHP programming language.
• My Health Record shall have a back end for storage and management of information which shall make use of a cloud based NoSQL database as MongoDB.
• My Health Record will experience several testing activities that shall be carried out and any bugs that are found shall be logged in the tool as Bugzilla (Dettmer, 2016).

Review - Cloud Based Solutions

Cloud based solutions and their performance and usability will have a major role to play in this case. My Health Record will be deployed and delivered with the use of cloud based models. It will therefore be required to analyze and review the various cloud based options that are available.

There are mainly three forms of cloud delivery models as Platform as a Service, Software as a Service and Infrastructure as a Service which are abbreviated as PaaS, SaaS and IaaS respectively.

In case of My Health Record the delivery activities that will be carried out will be best support by PaaS. There are many reasons that are present behind the choice of this model because of the performance and reviews of the model in the market and among the users. It is the model that will ensure that the security of the information related with My Health Record is maintained all throughout. The security protocols that are necessary will be easily implemented in this model and it has its own security mechanisms as well to make sure that none of the violations take place. There are instances wherein it has been seen that there are issues related with the ownership of data in case of cloud based solutions. However, such a case is not present in My Health record as the ownership and authority related formalities are done and declared in advance.  

The next model that will be required to be selected in case of My Health Record will be the cloud deployment model. There are mainly three types of deployment models in cloud as private cloud, hybrid cloud and public cloud. In this case, the end users that will be using the application have been defined. Also, the nature of information that will be handled by the application has also been classified. This information will mainly be critical and sensitive as it will comprise health related information of the patients. The model that will be applicable in this case will be private cloud on the basis of the security concerns that are related with My Health Record. There may be instances of execution of security risks and attacks which will be reduced and minimized with private cloud. 

SDLC Approach

SDLC is a practice that specifies the guidelines that must be followed for the development and deployment of software.

There are various approaches that have been defined and created in association with SDLC. These approaches are mainly classified in two categories as predictive and adaptive SDLC.

Predictive SDLC

Predictive SDLC, as the name suggests, is an approach in which the steps and phases that are defined are on the basis of the set procedures which have no scope of alteration or change during the timeline of the project. Also, the behavior and the patterns associated with the system are estimated and noted in advance. In case of My Health Record, requirements are clearly specified. With the adaptation of this particular approach, the management will have the set processes to follow and guidelines to adapt in case of a deviation. There is one drawback with this approach in terms of the requirements inflation as the project risk which will not be treated properly in case of predictive SDLC, if occurred.

Adaptive SDLC

Second approach that has been defined and can be implemented in the activities related with My Health Record is Adaptive SDLC. It is the approach in which the ad-hoc process is followed for the execution of the activities and achieving the business goals and objectives. There is no set flow in this approach and the flow is designed and estimated on the basis of the project scenarios and requirements. The drawbacks of predictive SDLC in terms of difficulty to deal with requirements inflation is one of the major strengths of adaptive approach as such occurrences can be easily dealt with. The project team will not be required to do additional work whenever there is a change in the requirement. However, there may be budget issues related with this approach as the cost associated with it is high. 

Conclusions

After analyzing both the approaches, it has been recommended and concluded that adaptive SDLC will have higher applicability than predictive SDLC. The drawback will adaptive SDLC is in terms of costs which will not be an issue in this case as My Health Record is an initiative of Commonwealth Government of Australia. However, the drawback related with predictive SDLC may have some serious implications on the project and the application.

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