| Telemedicine record systems, developed for managing patient's electronic medical records, have the potential to improve quality care to patients when distance is involved. Distance often delays proper treatment and prevents transmittal of vital patient pathological information from its source host to a remote site where the information can be extremely valuable. Currently, there are no commercially available telemedicine record systems in use that are capable of communicating with other systems anywhere and at any time. Proprietary telemedicine workstations work with customized software and hardware platforms and are not compatible with other telemedicine systems. Pilot telemedicine programs are being implemented at some large regional hospitals, but they are restricted to its affiliated member hospitals only with no open links to other hospitals. This study focuses on designing and developing a telemedicine record system in a patient-centered health care providing platform. The platform adopts open standards and made use of commercially available software and hardware components to ensure system compatibility among participating hospitals. The design approach was based on the object-oriented system development methodology and concentrates on finding objects, classes, and interfaces in the system domain. Objects replicate real things and appeal to human cognition. Viewing the software system design with an object-oriented perspective enhances the designer's understanding of the target system, promotes object reusability in the system, and reduces system development costs. The system development effort focused on integrating all software components and hardware devices together for a prototype evaluated and tested for final acceptance. Its strategy concentrates on verifying the design requirements and validating the system performance factors. Design requirements are frequently reviewed during the development phase, while automated testing tools are used to detect and eradicate potential program defects. Design improvements discovered at this phase may backtrack to the earlier phase for revision updating. This iterative development approach ensures a robust telemedicine record system that is reliable, maintainable, and supportable. |
