Communications of the ACM - Special issue Participatory Design
Clearing the way for physicians' use of clinical information systems
Communications of the ACM
A Process Model Basis for Evolving Hospital Information Systems
Journal of Medical Systems
Agile software development
Participatory Design: Principles and Practices
Participatory Design: Principles and Practices
User Centered System Design; New Perspectives on Human-Computer Interaction
User Centered System Design; New Perspectives on Human-Computer Interaction
Pair Programming on the C3 Project
Computer
Introducing software engineering by means of Extreme Programming
Proceedings of the 25th International Conference on Software Engineering
The Characteristics of Agile Software Processes
TOOLS '01 Proceedings of the 39th International Conference and Exhibition on Technology of Object-Oriented Languages and Systems (TOOLS39)
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Solid organ transplant has been steadily increasing in number both nationally and internationally. Caring for the transplant patients in the hospital setting, right after the patient is moved from the intensive care unit to the ward, is one of the most challenging tasks in nursing. It involves many procedures, rigid protocols, tight monitoring, and intensive data gathering for use by the other coordinating healthcare professionals. The complexity is further increased when a nurse has to take care of several transplant patients in a single shift. Of late, there has been a growth of computer applications in nursing and clinical information systems. Their acceptability and usability determine the ultimate success of computer support for this complex task. In this paper, we present a case study in which we combine two well-known software engineering techniques-namely, agile programming and user centered design-toward the goal of developing an interactive system for supporting the activities of transplant nurses in a hospital setting. This has resulted in a usable end-product and the user centered approach has motivated the nurses to move towards the use of computers in their jobs for better productivity. The product's usability was formally evaluated and is reported herein. The strengths and limitations of this approach are also discussed. The software product developed has been well accepted and is currently being planned to replace the manual methods followed in the transplant ward of a large metropolitan hospital.