Specification of Legal Requirements for Digital Health: A Proposal Based on a Virtual Ethnographic Study
Requirements specification, Virtual ethnography, Digital Health Software, Requirements, Sensitive data, Data security.
The advancement of technologies and the need for improvement in the quality of healthcare have driven Digital Health, bringing a new demand for innovative solutions that can contain sensitive data and requiring stricter attention to requirements. Healthcare solutions that neglect essential requirements for legal compliance and data security for both patients and professionals can produce disastrous consequences. These include significant financial losses and imminent risks to physical and psychological health from the unwanted leakage of sensitive information. Given this scenario, it is unquestionable that health solutions are legally compliant and have a high standard of data security. The general objective of this work is to investigate and analyze challenges and opportunities related to the specification of requirements in digital health and the agile development process. Among the specific objectives, besides verifying how the specification is being elaborated, is also the implementation of the ethnographic study in a virtual way. Ethnography is a qualitative methodology that can reveal opportunities for improvements in the development process and in Requirements Engineering. Several forms of data collection were used, such as observation, document analysis and interviews to investigate and understand practices. As possible results of this work, we consider (1) the comparison between ethnographic studies applied by the researcher in 2019 and 2023; (2) the adaptation and application of ethnographic methodology in a virtual work environment; (3) the discovery of challenges related to the specification of requirements and the development process; (4) Specification model based on the security of data processing according to the needs of Digital Health software. The application and adaptation of ethnography in development teams can contribute to improving software production and quality.