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International Symposium on Foundations of Health Informatics Engineering and Systems

FHIES 2011: Foundations of Health Informatics Engineering and Systems pp 21–38Cite as

Form Follows Function

Model-Driven Engineering for Clinical Trials

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNPSE,volume 7151))

Abstract

We argue that, for certain constrained domains, elaborate model transformation technologies—implemented from scratch in general-purpose programming languages—are unnecessary for model-driven engineering; instead, lightweight configuration of commercial off-the-shelf productivity tools suffices. In particular, in the CancerGrid project, we have been developing model-driven techniques for the generation of software tools to support clinical trials. A domain metamodel captures the community’s best practice in trial design. A scientist authors a trial protocol, modelling their trial by instantiating the metamodel; customized software artifacts to support trial execution are generated automatically from the scientist’s model. The metamodel is expressed as an XML Schema, in such a way that it can be instantiated by completing a form to generate a conformant XML document. The same process works at a second level for trial execution: among the artifacts generated from the protocol are models of the data to be collected, and the clinician conducting the trial instantiates such models in reporting observations—again by completing a form to create a conformant XML document, representing the data gathered during that observation. Simple standard form management tools are all that is needed. Our approach is applicable to a wide variety of information-modelling domains: not just clinical trials, but also electronic public sector computing, customer relationship management, document workflow, and so on.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, University of Oxford, Wolfson Building, Parks Road, Oxford, OX1 3QD, UK

    Jim Davies, Jeremy Gibbons, Charles Crichton, Steve Harris & Andrew Tsui

  2. Computer Science Research Group, Aston University, Aston Triangle, Birmingham, B4 7ET, UK

    Radu Calinescu

Authors
  1. Jim Davies
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  2. Jeremy Gibbons
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  3. Radu Calinescu
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  4. Charles Crichton
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  5. Steve Harris
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  6. Andrew Tsui
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. International Institute for Software Technology, United Nations University, Casa Silva Mendes, Est. do Engenheiro Trigo No. 4, Macao, China

    Zhiming Liu

  2. Centre for Software Certification, McMaster University, 1280 Main Street West, ITB 202, L8S 4K1, Hamilton, ON, Canada

    Alan Wassyng

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© 2012 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Davies, J., Gibbons, J., Calinescu, R., Crichton, C., Harris, S., Tsui, A. (2012). Form Follows Function. In: Liu, Z., Wassyng, A. (eds) Foundations of Health Informatics Engineering and Systems. FHIES 2011. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 7151. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-32355-3_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-32355-3_2

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-32354-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-32355-3

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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