Modelling mobile health systems: an application of augmented MDA for the extended healthcare enterprise

Mobile health systems can extend the enterprise computing system of the healthcare provider by bringing services to the patient any time and anywhere. We propose a model-driven design and development methodology for the development of the m-health components in such extended enterprise computing systems. The methodology applies a model-driven design and development approach augmented with formal validation and verification to address quality and correctness and to support model transformation. Work on modelling applications from the healthcare domain is reported. One objective of this work is to explore and elaborate the proposed methodology. At the University of Twente we are developing m-health systems based on body area networks (BANs). One specialization of the generic BAN is the health BAN, which incorporates a set of devices and associated software components to provide some set of health-related services. A patient has a personalized instance of the health BAN customized to their current set of needs. A health professional interacts with their patients' BANs via a BAN professional system. The set of deployed BANs are supported by a server. We refer to this distributed system as the BAN System. The BAN system extends the enterprise computing system of the healthcare provider. Development of such systems requires a sound software engineering approach and this is what we explore with the new methodology. The methodology is illustrated with reference to modelling activities targeted at real implementations. In the context of the awareness project BAN implementations are tested in a number of clinical settings including epilepsy management and management of chronic pain.