A Clinical Functional Requirements (CFR) domain library for elicit correct clinical requirements

Eliciting correct clinical functional requirements is crucial as it determines the quality and sustainability of clinical software. However, eliciting correct functional requirements is very challenging, especially for requirements engineers who are not well versed with the business process and the vocabulary used in clinical domains. The complexity and specificity of the terms and terminologies used in the clinical domain may lead to misunderstanding and misinterpretation of terms. Motivated from this problem, this thesis proposes a Clinical Functional Requirements (CFR) Domain Library to assist requirements engineers to elicit correct functional clinical functional requirements. This domain library was specifically developed to address the challenges in eliciting clinical functional requirements and the lack of appropriate tool to assist requirements engineers to automatically elicit clinical requirements. This study adopted a three-phase research method consisting of the analysis, design and development and evaluation and testing. The first phase involved identifying the research gap and conducting two preliminary studies to determine the focus of the study. In the second phase, we developed the Clinical Functional Requirements (CFR) domain library, based on the key structural patterns. A collection of clinical functional requirements was compiled and the domain library was embedded in an automated tool called Malaysia English Requirements (MEReq) to elicit clinical requirements. We employed the EUC and EUI methodologies with GUI capability to elicit and to visualise the clinical functional requirements. The evaluation of the correctness and usability of the CFR domain library was conducted in phase three. Two evaluations were carried out in this research: 1) correctness test and 2) usability test. We found that the correct rate of eliciting clinical functional requirements based on the CFR domain library approach is better than the manual approach. Further, the usability study reported that the CFR domain library approach is able to help requirements engineer to ease the phase of eliciting clinical requirements. It can be concluded that the CFR domain library embedded in MEReq tool able to enhance the correct and the usability of the elicited clinical requirements