Development of a health management information system using agile software-engineering methods

Abstract

The purpose of this thesis is to discuss the development of a web application from scratch. It serves to build a health management information system from basic principles and covers all the software engineering activities starting from the gathering of requirements, evaluating these and eventually implementing a health management information system by applying several iterations of the Agile-extreme-programming-software-engineering approach to develop a Health Management System for the Kabul University Poly-clinic located at Kabul University campus in order to computerize clerical activities at the hospital. Questionnaires were used to uncover the clerical problems experienced by the hospital sta . Attempts to address these problems by designing and im- plementing software and re ne the software after some iterations of feedback- redesign-and-implementation following the guidelines of Agile extreme pro- gramming. The previous Health management systems at the hospital were paper based. The new computerized system has eased the burdens of tracking the les of patients at the hospital, leading to easier and more e cient access to information by the health-care professionals at the hospital. An assessment of the impact this has had on the medical and clerical sta and the smoother administration of the hospital by repeated user acceptance testing by means of questionnaires con rms the success of the project.