Software Engineering: Software Prototyping Case Report Analysis

This report provides an analysis of a case study on software prototyping, specifically focusing on the development of a Health Information Exchange (HIE) dashboard. The study, conducted by Scott et al. (2016), investigates the refinement of user requirements through rapid prototyping within the context of poison control centers (PCCs) and emergency departments (EDs). The authors designed low-fidelity sketches and an interactive high-fidelity prototype, conducting usability tests to gather feedback from end-users. The research highlights the importance of user-centered design in creating software that facilitates HIE between PCCs and EDs, ultimately improving patient care. The report discusses the research methodologies, including qualitative and quantitative designs, inductive research approaches, and data collection techniques using secondary sources. The findings emphasize the need for specialized software to support HIE within the PCC workflow, and the issues highlighted by the researchers include usability problems and the lack of integration between PCCs and EDs. The conclusion emphasizes the role of rapid prototyping in refining consumer requirements for HIE dashboards and its relevance to software engineering methodology. The report summarizes the significance of the study for understanding the application of software prototyping in healthcare settings.

Software prototyping

Introduction
• Software engineering contains various methods for
monitoring the development of software involving
requirement collection, coding, testing and analysis
process.
• The goal of this paper is to describe the significance
of software engineering methodology and analyze a
journal article based on the selected topic.
• The title of the adopted article is “Software
prototyping: A case report of refining user
requirements for a health information exchange
dashboard” that was written by Scott and other
researchers in the year 2016 [1].

Intentions of the article
• The chosen paper is based on software
engineering that was written by Scott and
other researchers in the year 2016.
• The key objective of this paper is to
demonstrate the design on an HIE dashboard
and the refinement of consumer requirements
through a rapid prototyping process [2].
• This research paper highlighted the
significance of poison control centers (PCCs)
and emergency departments in the reduction of
poisoning related issues [3].

Intentions of the article
• The authors argued that poisoning is a
common cause of death in the US.
• Mainly, poison control centers provided a
platform for controlling and reducing the
rate of poisonings in the patients.
• For facilitating the consumer center
design, the researchers adopted rapid
prototyping which provided feedback from
the target consumers based on the HIE
software [4].

Intentions of the article
• In this paper, the authors also reviewed the
benefits and challenges of HIE software in
the context of poisoning.
• It is true that the utilization of rapid
prototyping technique for electing
consumer engaged consumers.
• Such kind of method may help to control
the information related to the patients
suffering from poisoning related issues [5].

Intentions of the article
• The authors argued that PCC systems are
not mainly developed for facilitating HIEs
with emergency departments.
• This paper also contained the views of
other experts for better understanding
the research concerns and reducing the
gaps occurred in the study [6].

Intentions of the article
• It is identified that the HIE dashboard allows SPIs
in the poison control centers in order to monitor
the health related issues faced by the users.
• In this paper, the authors designed an effective
software and computing systems in order to help
the integration of technology at the programming
code level.
• This type of process also enables SPIs for sending
consultation notes to the patients’ assessment
and recommendations for health care providers in
the emergency departments.

Research methodologies
• There are following methods and
approaches used by the authors:
▫Research design
▫Research approach
▫Data collection
▫Data analysis

Research design
• It is a common method used in the
investigations.
• Research design is mainly divided into two
parts including qualitative and quantitative.
• In this article, both qualitative and
quantitative designs were used by the
authors.
• These methods helped for developing an
effective hypothesis of the research.

Research approach
• There are major two types of approaches
used in the research such as inductive
and deductive.
• In the chosen paper, the authors adopted
an inductive approach because of the
theoretical nature of the investigation.
• With the help of this research approach,
the authors were able to maintain the
quality of the investigation.

Data collection method
• It is an important section of research
methodology.
• In this paper, the authors included
secondary data gathering techniques
because of their ability to provide relevant
facts about research concerns.
• There are numerous sources were used for
gathering secondary data including recent
studies, peer reviewed articles, online
books and so on.

Data analysis
• In order to analyze the gathered data, the
authors were used descriptive content
analysis and SPSS tools.
• It has the capability to provide effective
outcomes of the research and manage the
gaps between the research and collected
data.
• Therefore, it is stated that using such kind
of method the authors were able to achieve
the aims of the study.

Findings and results of the
study
• The authors found that poison control centers are not
developed for facilitating HIE with emergency
departments for which specialized software was developed
in order to support HIE within the normal workflow of the
PCC.
• This research paper shows a theoretical framework about
the poisoning problem and examined the significance of
PCCs and EDs in the context of poisoning health issue.
• The researchers also designed an interactive high fidelity
prototype and developed scenario-based test with the
consumers that helped in the enhancement of experience
in the area of HIE software poison control centers.

Issues highlighted by the researchers
• The researchers highlighted that poisoning
is one of the leading causes of
unintentional deaths in the United State.
• It is observed that the major issue linked
with PCC is that it cannot be used for
facilitating the current HIE dashboard with
the emergency departments.
• The authors evaluated that usability or
interface is a common problem occurred in
the systems.

Conclusion of the article
• It can be concluded that the utilization of rapid
prototyping in the HIE dashboard may be engaged
consumers and helped for performing user centers
design in an effective way.
• This study shows the significance of refining
consumer requirements for HIE dashboard.
• In which the researchers reviewed the importance of
prototyping technique in the information dashboard.
• The included article is relevant to the unit (software
engineering methodology) in which the researchers
provided their views on the computing software and
user design process.

Conclusion
• From this investigation, it is summarized that
computing software is able to control and
handle the information of the consumers
effectively.
• This investigation reviewed a journal article
based on software engineering and identified
the major intention of the article.
• This research can help the readers for
evaluating the importance of rapid prototyping
and poison control centers in the reduction of
poisoning related issues.

References
1. S.D., Nelson, G., Del Fiol, H., Hanseler, B.I. Crouch and, M.R., Cummins,
“Software prototyping,” Applied clinical informatics, vol. 7, no. 01, pp.22-32,
2016.
2. T.J., Ranney, M.L., Martin, J., Dorroh, N. Asselin and, I.N., Sarkar, “Health
information exchange in emergency medical services,” Applied clinical
informatics, vol. 9, no. 04, pp.884-891, 2018.
3. J., Anders, M., Mefenza, C., Bobda, F., Yonga, Z. Aklah and, K., Gunn, “A
hardware/software prototyping system for driving assistance investigations,”
Journal of Real-Time Image Processing, vol. 11, no. 3, pp.559-569, 2016.
4. T., Besard, V., Churavy, A. Edelman and, B., De Sutter, “Rapid software
prototyping for heterogeneous and distributed platforms,” Advances in
Engineering Software, vol. 132, no. 6, pp.29-46, 2019.
5. A., Nguyen-Duc, X. Wang and, P., Abrahamsson, “What influences the speed of
prototyping? An empirical investigation of twenty software startups,”
In International Conference on Agile Software Development, vol. 12, no. 6, pp.
20-36, 2017.
6. H.M., Chen, R. Kazman and, S., Haziyev, “Strategic prototyping for developing
big data systems,” IEEE Software, vol. 33, no. 2, pp.36-43, 2016.