Generic STD Information System Requirements

This is a collection of documents that specifies a set of requirements for developing an information system for use in state and local STD prevention and control programs. These documents are not meant to be a highly detailed and specific set of requirements for building a particular system; since it would be impossible to address the different requirements of state and local health departments. However, they are designed to be a solid starting place for designing a system. They identify critical components for any STD prevention and control program information system (STD information system ) and describe STD prevention and control business processes in a way that facilitate communicting system requirements to a systems developer.

Generic STD Prevention and Control Program Information System Requirements (778kb, zipped)

The download above contains the following items:

• Overview (Overview.doc) – provides brief descriptions of each document.

• Requirements Summary (STD_Requirements_Summary.doc) – lays out a scope and vision for an STD information system. It provides an overview of STD prevention program business processes and identifies which processes fall within the scope of an automated system and which do not. It identifies key stakeholders in the process, profiles of various business roles within an STD prevention program, and a glossary of terms used within an STD prevention program and throughout the requirements package.

• Functional Requirements (STD_Functional_Requirements.doc) – lays out in straightforward terms what functionality an STD information system should provide in order to be effective. The document is organized into functional areas and consists of a series of statements such as “The system shall provide the ability to create, view, update and delete client records as defined in the STD Data Elements spreadsheet”.

• Use Cases (Informal) (UC...doc, 14 files) – these use a specific format to document standard STD prevention program business practices. The type of format used in these documents is best known as either an informal use case or a usage scenario. The steps in each business process are documented with a basic course of action along with multiple alternate courses of action, depending on the process being documented.

• STD Information System Data Elements (STD_Date_Elements.xls) – documents the data elements needed to support the functional requirements laid out in the previous document. The spreadsheet is split into several worksheets based on the functional type of data (client, investigation, laboratory, etc.) being documented. The spreadsheet includes definitions, allowable values, and field-level business rules.

• STD Information System Business Rules (STD_Business_Rules.doc) – contains business rules that should be enforced by the system to ensure both proper system functioning and data integrity and accuracy. The document is organized by functional area and consists of statements such as “No client record can be added without performing a client record search first”.

• STD Information System Reports (.PDFs) – contain examples of canned reports that the system should support. This list of reports is not meant to be exhaustive but does contain reports that were identified as being very important for any program to have access to.

• Appendix A (Appendix_A.doc) – consists of a document entitled “STD Epi Networks”. The purpose of this document is to provide a simple but relatively complete explanation of the process of building an Epi network of related individuals through the process of interviewing and identifying partners and clusters to known cases of disease. This process is one of the more difficult ones to describe to a layman (such as an IT developer). This document was designed to shorten that learning curve and to make it more likely that any system developed will be able to effectively support this critical STD prevention business process.

• Appendix B (Appendix_B.pdf) – contains an Entity Relationship Diagram (ERD) that documents one possible logical model for a relational database to support an STD Control information system. This diagram does not specify a complete model but focuses in on a subject area entitled Public Health Activity, which documents a model used to support STD-specific activities such as STD investigations, interviews, Epi networks, etc.

• Appendix C (Appendix_C.pdf) – contains an Entity Relationship Diagram (ERD) that documents a possible logical model for another subject area within an STD Control data model. The model in Appendix C focuses on the related data types (laboratory tests, treatment, etc.) and how they can be associated with other entities within the model.