Miloslava Plachkinova

A Taxonomy of mHealth Apps -- Security and Privacy Concerns

With the increasing use of smartphones for healthcare purposes, more and more people now share their personal healthcare information using a variety of applications. The vast number of existing mobile health (mHealth) applications creates a serious problem for users, as often times they are unaware of how their data are managed and used. We propose a taxonomy incorporating the most significant security and privacy aspects of mHealth applications. This artifact can help outline some of the problems related to creating and downloading mHealth applications. The taxonomy was tested with 38 top-rated Android and iOS healthcare applications. Results of the evaluation suggest that having a unified mechanism to categorize mHealth applications with respect to security and privacy is important and can be beneficial. This study contributes to literature, as it builds upon prior work and adds knowledge to a still new and relatively unexplored domain such as mobile healthcare.

Communication Artifacts for Requirements Engineering

The current study aims to improve the requirements engineering RE communication, as often times projects fail due to poorly specified or misunderstood requirements. We use design science methods to build and evaluate a conceptual model which can add value to managers by offering them a set of guidelines and best practices for facilitating the RE communication. We did a qualitative study to investigate what the criteria are for selecting communication artifacts and we discovered that organizational culture plays a key role in this process. We demonstrate that the used artifacts need to adequately reflect the dynamic and intensity of the communication. Finally, we extend the RE process by adding two transitional phases to avoid requirements slipping through the gaps. Our findings indicate that such transitions are more distinct in traditional waterfall organizations and less salient in agile companies. The current study approaches the RE communication process from a design science perspective which adds more knowledge on the topic and addresses some existing issues leading to project failure.

Designing A Mobile Application for Complementary and Alternative Medicine: A Usability Approach

The use of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) is growing rapidly, and this trend has a significant impact on conventional healthcare. The lack of CAM disclosure between patients and physicians presents a serious challenge for successful treatment. The current study addresses this problem by proposing a CAM mobile application designed with a focus on usability. The goal of the study is to provide a platform where patients, physicians, and CAM practitioners can communicate, exchange ideas, and share their experiences. The mobile application is centered on the needs of the different user groups, and it provides an easy to navigate interface with responsive design, which is based on best practices in human-computer interaction. The study extends current knowledge by incorporating design science principles in the application development process and focuses on the usability of the proposed artifact to ensure successful communication on CAM between patients, physicians, and CAM practitioners.