By using this site, you agree to the Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
Accept
Health Works CollectiveHealth Works CollectiveHealth Works Collective
  • Health
    • Mental Health
    Health
    Healthcare organizations are operating on slimmer profit margins than ever. One report in August showed that they are even lower than the beginning of the…
    Show More
    Top News
    medicare part d benefits
    Everything that You Need to Know About Medicare Part D
    August 15, 2022
    Best Ways to Boost Your Immune System this Winter
    Best Ways to Boost Your Immune System this Winter
    November 15, 2022
    back pain issues
    Ways to Treat Constant Back Pain
    August 21, 2023
    Latest News
    How Probate Planning Shapes the Future of Your Estate and Family Care
    July 17, 2025
    Beyond Nutrition: Everyday Foods That Support Whole-Body Health
    June 15, 2025
    The Wide-Ranging Benefits of Magnesium Supplements
    June 11, 2025
    The Best Home Remedies for Migraines
    June 5, 2025
  • Policy and Law
    • Global Healthcare
    • Medical Ethics
    Policy and Law
    Get the latest updates about Insurance policies and Laws in the Healthcare industry for different geographical locations.
    Show More
    Top News
    More On Wellness Programs To Improve Health and Reduce Costs
    January 25, 2012
    Privatizing Social Security and Medicare: Who Can Defuse Political Dynamite?
    June 12, 2011
    Study: Risk of Death in Elderly Patients with Dementia Doubled with Some Antipsychotic Medications
    February 26, 2012
    Latest News
    How IT and Marketing Teams Can Collaborate to Protect Patient Trust
    July 17, 2025
    How Health Choices and Legal Actions Intersect After an Injury
    July 17, 2025
    How communities and healthcare providers can address slip and fall injuries with legal awareness
    July 17, 2025
    Let Your Lawyer Handle the Work Before You Pay Medical Costs
    July 6, 2025
  • Medical Innovations
  • News
  • Wellness
  • Tech
Search
© 2023 HealthWorks Collective. All Rights Reserved.
Reading: How to Tackle Vague Requirements in Health IT and Medical Device Software
Share
Notification Show More
Font ResizerAa
Health Works CollectiveHealth Works Collective
Font ResizerAa
Search
Follow US
  • About
  • Contact
  • Privacy
© 2023 HealthWorks Collective. All Rights Reserved.
Health Works Collective > Technology > Medical Devices > How to Tackle Vague Requirements in Health IT and Medical Device Software
Medical DevicesTechnology

How to Tackle Vague Requirements in Health IT and Medical Device Software

ShahidShah
ShahidShah
Share
7 Min Read
Health IT
SHARE

Health IT

Health IT

These days it’s pretty easy to build almost any kind of software you can imagine — what’s really hard, though, is figuring out what to build. As I work on complex software systems in government, medical devices, healthcare IT, and biomedical IT I find that tackling vague requirements is one of the most pervasive and difficult problems to solve. Even the most experienced developers have a hard time building something that has not been defined well for them; a disciplined software requirements engineering approach is necessary, especially in safety critical systems.

One of my colleagues in France, Abder-Rahman Ali, is currently pursuing his Medical Image Analysis Ph.D. and is passionate about applying computer science to medical imaging to come up with algorithms and systems that aid in Computer Aided Diagnosis (CAD). He’s got some brilliant ideas, especially in the use of fuzzy logic and storytelling to elicit better requirements so that CAD may become a reality some day. I asked Abder-Rahman to share with us a series of blog posts about how to tackle the problem of vague requirements. The following is his first installment, focused on storytelling and how it can be used in requirements engineering: 

More Read

3 Quick Ways To Market Your Medical Practice
Electronic Health Records: Still Not Good Enough (Part 2)
Role of Montoring Techs in Alarm Notification
The Increasing Problem of Chronic Wounds and Their Medtech Solutions
It Takes More Than Technology to Change Health Behaviors

I remember when I was a child how my grandmother used to tell us those fictional and non-fictional stories. They still ring in my ears, even after those many years that have passed by. We used to just sit down, open our ears, stare our eyes, move around with our thoughts, and we don’t get out of such situation until the story ends. We used to make troubles sometimes, and to get us calm, we were just being called to hear that story, and the feelings above came to use again.

Phebe Cramer, in her book, Storytelling, Narrative, and the Thematic Apperception Test, mentions how storytelling has a long tradition in human history. She highlights what have been considered the significant means by which man told his story. Some of those for instance were the famous epic poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey from the ninth century B.C., the Aeneid from 20 B.C., the east Indian Mahabharata and Ramayana from the fourth century A.C., …etc. This is how history was transmitted from one generation to the other.

Storytelling Tips and Tales emphasizes that stories connect us to the past, and enlighten for us the future, lessons can be learned from stories, and information is transmitted transparently and smoothly through stories. Teachers in schools are even being encouraged to use storytelling at their classrooms. The books also believes that storytelling is an engaging process that is rewarding for both the teller and the listener. Listeners will like enter new worlds by just hearing the words of the teller. Schank and Abelson even see that psychological studies have revealed that human beings learn best from stories, in their Knowledge and Memory: The Real Story.

Having mentioned that, a requirements engineer may ask, why couldn’t we just then bring storytelling to our domain? Especially that in our work, there would be a teller and a listener. Well, could that really be?

Let us examine the relationships between story elements and a software requirement in order to answer that question.

In his book, Telling Stories: A Short Path to Writing Better Software Requirements, Ben Rinzler highlights such relationships as follows (some explanations for the points was also used from Using Storytelling to Record Requirements: Elements for an Effective Requirements Elicitation Approach):

  1. Conflict: This is the problem you want to solve in the requirements process. An example of that is the conflict that occurs between stakeholders needs and the FDA regulatory requirements for some medical device software.
  2. Theme:  This is the central concept underlying the solution. For requirements engineering, this could be a “requirement”, that is, the project goal.
  3. Setting: Knowing that the setting is the place and time of the story. In requirements engineering, this can be stated as the broader concept of the problem at hand, such as providing information about the technology environment, business, …etc.
  4. Plot: The plot of a story is its events that occur in a certain order, such that their outcome affects later once. In requirements engineering, this is the current and future systems’ series of actions.
  5. Character: This refers to any entity capable of action. In requirements engineering, this can for instance represent people, machines, and programs.
  6. Point of view: Having different points of view is important for providing a unified view that tries to provide a whole description of what is actually happening, and what everyone needs. This is like describing a medical device software process from the patient and physician points of view for instance.

So, yes, a relationship and an analogy exists between storytelling and software requirements.

In future posts in the series, Shahid and I will dig more deep on how storytelling could be employed in the requirements engineering process, and will also try to show how can fuzzy logic be embedded in the process to solve any issues that may be inherent in the storytelling method.

Meanwhile, drop us comments if there are specific areas of requirements engineering complex software systems that you’re especially interested in learning more about.

health IT / shutterstock

Share This Article
Facebook Copy Link Print
Share

Stay Connected

1.5kFollowersLike
4.5kFollowersFollow
2.8kFollowersPin
136kSubscribersSubscribe

Latest News

Grounded Healing: A Natural Ally for Sustainable Healthcare Systems
How IT and Marketing Teams Can Collaborate to Protect Patient Trust
Global Healthcare Policy & Law
July 17, 2025
paramedics in surgical gloves and masks
How Health Choices and Legal Actions Intersect After an Injury
Health care
July 16, 2025
a woman giving a key
How Probate Planning Shapes the Future of Your Estate and Family Care
Health
July 16, 2025
a woman with kinesio tapes on her back arm
How communities and healthcare providers can address slip and fall injuries with legal awareness
Health care
July 16, 2025

You Might also Like

Forever Fix: Gene Therapy
Medical InnovationsTechnology

The Latest in Gene Therapy Research

May 10, 2013
Mobile HealthTechnology

All The Ingredients You Need For A Successful Health Insurance App

January 25, 2019
Medical Device Marketing, Digital Marketing, PPC, SEO, SEM
BusinessMedical Devices

5 Online Statistics That Can Impact Medical Device Marketing

August 8, 2014
siemens patient doctor connection
Medical DevicesTechnology

IT to Connect Patients More Closely to Medical Staff

March 3, 2014
Subscribe
Subscribe to our newsletter to get our newest articles instantly!
Follow US
© 2008-2025 HealthWorks Collective. All Rights Reserved.
  • About
  • Contact
  • Privacy
Welcome Back!

Sign in to your account

Username or Email Address
Password

Lost your password?