Using formal specification techniques for advanced counseling systems in health care

  • Authors:

  • Dominikus Herzberg;Nicola Marsden;Corinna Leonhardt;Peter Kübler;Hartmut Jung;Sabine Thomanek;Annette Becker

  • Affiliations:

  • Heilbronn University, Faculty of Informatics, Department of Software Engineering, Heilbronn, Germany;Heilbronn University, Faculty of Informatics, Department of Software Engineering, Heilbronn, Germany;Philipps-University Marburg, Department of Medical Psychology, Marburg, Germany;Heilbronn University, Faculty of Informatics, Department of Software Engineering, Heilbronn, Germany;Philipps-University Marburg, Department of Medical Psychology, Marburg, Germany;Philipps-University Marburg, Department of General Practice, Family Medicine, Marburg, Germany;Philipps-University Marburg, Department of General Practice, Family Medicine, Marburg, Germany

  • Venue:
  • USAB'07 Proceedings of the 3rd Human-computer interaction and usability engineering of the Austrian computer society conference on HCI and usability for medicine and health care
  • Year:
  • 2007

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Abstract

Computer-based counseling systems in health care play an important role in the toolset available for doctors to inform, motivate and challenge their patients according to a well-defined therapeutic goal. In order to study value, use, usability and effectiveness of counseling systems for specific use cases and purposes, highly adaptable and extensible systems are required, which are - despite their flexibility and complexity - reliable, robust and provide exhaustive logging capabilities. We developed a computer-based counseling system, which has some unique features in that respect: The actual counseling system is generated out of a formal specification. Interaction behavior, logical conception of interaction dialogs and the concrete look & feel of the application are separately specified. In addition, we have begun to base the formalism on a mathematical process calculus enabling formal reasoning. As a consequence e.g. consistency and termination of a counseling session with a patient can be verified. We can precisely record and log all system and patient generated events; they are available for advanced analysis and evaluation.