Lead Institution: Vanderbilt University

Project Leader: Mark Frisse

Research Progress

• Abstract
  A repository of use cases supports development of policy models, business rules, and executable policy enforcement code. Use cases also assist collaborative development of institutional policies and/or revisions of governmental requirements.

• Focus of the research/Market need for this project
  Use cases are essential to any aspect of policy formulation or modeling. Use cases help individuals understand what policies mean and can be used to test the adequacy of automated policies. The project provides a repository for use cases related to health information use and disclosure, ranging from very simple transactions to more complex narratives.

• Project Aims/Goals
  Develop a library of use cases involving health information exchange. These uses cases may then be modeled to test policies and policy enforcement mechanisms.

• Key Conclusions/Significant Findings/Milestones reached/Deliverables
  Focus on specific use cases allows modelers to identify the specific requirements of federal and state policies governing the use case transaction(s) and develop policy models and business rules based on those policies for use in generating code to enforce the rules. Focus on specific use cases may also facilitate consensus on interpretation of current laws and rules and agreement on needed changes. Use cases also assist development of mutually consistent institutional policies which reflect the business rules and executable code.

• Materials Available for Other Investigators/interested parties
  Use Case Library materials are available through https://policyforge.org/. They are currently found in the HIE Use Cases project wiki in PolicyForge.

  Once users register for policyforge.org, they may access this “public” project to view the library material. They may also create their own projects. In order to copy and paste library material from a public project into a new project, it’s currently necessary to request to join the public project through the project’s home page.

• Market entry strategies
  PolicyForge.org is an open collaboration website that is similar to the established open source community sites such as SourceForge or GitHUB but it is specifically tailored for policy formalization. We use the PolicyForge.org website to provide access to the Privacy Use Case Library. For more information see the Market Entry Strategy for the Policy Authoring Environment.

Bibliography
PolicyForge: A Collaborative Environment for Formalizing Privacy Policies in Health Care
Andras Nadas, Laszlo Juracz, Janos Sztipanovits, Mark E. Frisse, and Ann J. Olsen
Software Engineering in Health Care (SEHC), 5th International Workshop, May 2013