Testing Scenario and Functionalities of the Proposed Solution

Testing Scenario and Functionalities of the Proposed Solution

Discuss the Purpose of Testing and Testing Strategy

Making strategic decisions in the public health and health care field is a contentious issue among the involved stakeholders. The primary purpose of creating and testing a scenario is to lay a foundation for further research and strategic planning. Testing a scenario requires both qualitative and quantitative elements of research to come up with a substantial finding and recommendation. Its primary objective is to describe the application of the scenario strategy in the health care field. Also, give the insight to create better scenario projects in the future. In this case, testing of electronic health records (EHR) is essential to ensure that they are safe and effective. Notably, in the recent past, the method of testing scenarios has become an important tool to inform research and various activities. Consequently, this is due to its usage of both quantitative and qualitative aspects, both scenario calculation and discussion and opinions.

According to Glenn, a scenario is a narrative with a credible aim and impact that influences both the present and future conditions. Scenario testing and testing strategy illuminate the salient decisions, proceeding, and consequences in the whole story. The scenario summarizes likely occurrences in the future. Besides, creating scenarios provide an interdisciplinary approach in which to delve into future activities, also providing other benefits, for instance, upholding a way of thinking that if future-oriented by considering alternative development projects. Moreover, testing and testing strategy cultivate a systematic and organized research concerning questionable next alternatives by using knowledge from the experts. The testing strategy provides a systemic procedure that decreases difficulty associated with the examined correlation, provides clear findings, and enhances the decision-making strategy.

Explain How You Developed the Testing Scenario

The majority of the health facilities restrict testing to the environment separate from the one used by clinicians. However, this study focuses on electronic health records (EHR). The choice if this testing scenario stems from the fact that EHRs are complicated software and hardware system which occasionally interact with other software and hardware thus problematic to predict the behavior of the production industry. The study develops this testing scenario because of the need to secure and ensure the effectiveness of EHRs. A lot of researches has documented the undesirable results, ineffectiveness, and safety issues of EHRs. The report by the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology explores the safety issues associated with EHRs cite. The need to test and implement better safety practices is, therefore, an important research area. It is essential to test and propose improved software to curb safety issues.

The testing scenario is developed by examining various organizations that had implemented EHR in the country. An examination has been conducted in each organization through the contribution of informatics, clinicians, and IT personnel. Also, the sites in the production environment that aim to emulate the production of EHR. In some cases, I asked if I could evaluate the live production EHR similar to the one used by clinicians to test patients. Several sites granted my request while others denied access due to policy matters or lacked test patients awaiting testing in the production.

Discuss Items That Need to Be Tested

Several items are tested to enhance secure and practical testing in production. First, the incremental release stipulates that before releasing the newly developed software, it should be thoroughly tested in an environment similar to the production environment. After that, the software should be moved to the production environment but restrict the number of alpha testers testing patients using it. From here, it should be allowed to a small group of clinicians and after that released.

Also, test patients in the production environment should be created using clear names. In the database, they should be referred to as test patients and the information stored differently in the EHR. The purpose of clear names is to avoid confusion with real patients. Notably, the right name for a test patient eliminates errors that may be brought by the wrong patient. Other items that need to be tested include test accounts for testers to ensure they use distinct names and downstream personnel to notify those affected by the results of the tests before the testing is conducted, for instance, laboratory technicians, nurses, pharmacists, among others.

Discuss How the Test Results Will Be Documented and Mitigated.

Sufficient testing should be conducted in the test environment before releasing the upgraded software to the production environment. Ongoing regression testing should be done regularly by testers on test patients in the production environment to ensure that there are recurrent errors. The test patients should be given distinct names to avoid confusing them with real patients. In the database, the test patients should be marked as test patients to avoid mistaking them for actual patients. Also, the records of test patients should be different from the records of real patients in the EHR. Conclusively, the testers should develop separate accounts with distinct names for test patients.