Mapping clinical scenarios to functional requirements: a tool for evaluating clinical information systems

We developed a tool for evaluating clinical information systems (CIS) by mapping a set of detailed functional requirements to specific elements of clinical scenarios. A team of primary care physicians, specialists, medical records professionals, and information systems staff defined detailed requirements for a new CIS at Harvard Pilgrim Health Care. The requirements were mapped to elements of clinical scenarios, which were provided to vendors for use in demonstrating their systems. Systems were rated as to how well they met the functional requirements in their demonstrations. This method of evaluating information systems provides an incremental advantage over use of requirements or scenarios by themselves.