The maintenance, distribution and development of biomedical computer software: an exercise in software engineering

The growing reliance of biomedical investigations on computer software in almost all facets of their work places considerable emphasis on the need for the integrated management of the software. In order to efficiently develop, distribute, and maintain the software, tools are required which not only automate these tasks but also, wherever possible, 'semi-intelligently', alert their user to irregular situation. We describe an assortment of such tools routinely used in the management of the SAAM/CONSAM biokinetic software and illustrate their application. Furthermore, using these techniques we have presented some comparative performances of numerical integrators and of computer processors.