PIs: Lori Clarke, Philip Henneman, George Avrunin, Elizabeth Henneman, and Leon Osterweil
This project presents a new approach to developing human-intensive systems in which the coordination among human participants, hardware devices, and application software systems are specified in an executable, process-definition language. Process definitions are subjected to rigorous analysis in order to detect defects and evaluate proposed improvements. Such validated process definitions can then be used to drive simulations and train process participants. The proposed approach is to be evaluated by developing a process support environment that is then used to define and analyze medical processes. Medical processes provide a particularly good evaluation domain as they are human-intensive, involve diverse software applications and hardware devices, and are both safety critical and error prone. Separating and rigorously analyzing the coordination aspects of complex, human-intensive systems represent a paradigm shift from current development practices. This approach provides a strong technical and methodological basis for the engineering of human-intensive systems, leading to systems that are scalable, understandable, and able to amplify human efficacy and control. Finally, this process-centered approach has the potential to improve the quality and reduce the cost of medical care.
