REWBAH 2021

Second International Workshop on Requirements Engineering for Well-Being, Aging, and Health
September 20, 2021,
Online!

Overview

Health-related expenses often represent over 10% of a country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), and this proportion is increasing according to the World Health Organization. Many systems and services that promote health fail, and yet requirements engineering research in this area is sparse. Nowadays, as the COVID-19 pandemic has spread all over the world, influencing our health and well-being, in particular the elderly population, focusing on Well-Being, Health, and Aging (WBAH) has become more relevant than ever.

The REWBAH workshop fosters discussion related to requirements engineering resulting from the need to build software systems that not only support healthcare, but also foster well-being, encourage patients and the population in general to live according to healthy lifestyle recommendations, and address the specific needs of an aging population. These systems can provide personalized and tailored behavioral change programs for decreasing health risk factors.

This theme is in line with the objectives of the American Healthy People 2030 Framework on health promotion and disease prevention, with a vision for “A society in which all people can achieve their full potential for health and well-being across the lifespan. Well-being is part of a more holistic definition of health that, according to the World Health Organization, is “a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity’’. This is also in line with the themes of the Requirements Engineering (RE) conference 2021 regarding societal challenges, opportunities for smart and connected solutions, and the discovery of stakeholder' needs in the WBAH domain.

The workshop will bring together practitioners and researchers from Software and Requirements Engineering, Medicine, Health Sciences, Psychology, and other relevant disciplines. This workshop is open to the public.

Workshop Proceeding Available!

Introduction

  • Yu, E. , Liu, L., Levy, M., and Amyot, D., "REWBAH 2021: Second International Workshop on Requirements Engineering for Well-Being, Aging, and Health : Welcome from the Organizers". In: 2021 IEEE 29th International Requirements Engineering Conference Workshops (REW), 2021, pp. 236-238, https://doi.org/10.1109/REW53955.2021.00044.

REWBAH 2021 Papers

See also this overview of REWBAH for practitioners (preprint), which recently appeared as:

  • M. Levy et al., "Requirements Engineering for Well-Being, Aging, and Health: An Overview for Practitioners", IEEE Software, vol. 38, no. 3, pp. 7-12, May-June 2021, https://doi.org/10.1109/MS.2021.3058492

Thanks to the 20+ participants, including these smiling fellows!

Program

All times are in the South Bend (USA) time zone (EST).

8:00-8:15am Welcome and Introductions

  • Daniel Amyot (University of Ottawa and LIFE Research Institute, Canada), Meira Levy (Shenkar College of Engineering and Design, Israel), Lin Liu (Tsinghua University, China), Eric Yu (University of Toronto, Canada)

8:15-9:15am Keynote Talk

Dr. Galia Barkai, MD, MBA

Director of Sheba BEYOND, and Head of the Pediatric Infectious Diseases and Telemedicine units, Israel

Title: The Establishment of "Sheba Beyond" the First Virtual Hospital in Israel

Biography: These days, Galia is establishing and heading a virtual hospital within Sheba Medical Center – Sheba BEYOND, the first virtual hospital in Israel. Since 2019, she has served as the director of the Pediatric Infectious Disease Unit as well as the head of the Telemedicine Innovation Hub in Sheba's Innovation Center, ARC. In 2018, she became part of Sheba's management team as a medical director intern. Previously, Galia worked at Sheba as a consultant for Pediatric Infectious Diseases and served as deputy director in a general pediatrics department.
Galia completed her training in pediatrics at the Kaplan Medical Center in Rehovot, and specialized in infectious diseases at Soroka Medical Center in Be'er Sheva. Nowadays she is specializing in medical administration in Sheba Medical Center. Galia holds an MD from Tel Aviv University. As a member of the Inbar Healthcare Management Program, a joint venture of The MAOZ organization with Israel's Ministry of Health, she has just accomplished with distinction an MBA with a specialization in health systems management at Tel Aviv University.

9:15-9:45am Senior DT - A Design Thinking Method to Improve Requirements Engineering for Elderly Citizens

    • Alexandra Jussli (University of Applied Sciences Neu-Ulm, Germany), Heiko Gewald (University of Applied Sciences Neu-Ulm, Germany)

    • Abstract: Requirement engineers face challenges in assessing the needs of elderly citizens, who typically differ a lot in terms of experiences, perspectives, and cognition. Design Thinking (DT) is a promising methodology for overcoming this barrier because it offers a structured approach for assessing users’ needs and developing new ideas. However, DT needs to be adapted to the specifics of older participants to grasp user insights fully. For instance, the endurance of older participants is limited, and collaboration with other stakeholders is hampered due to decreasing physical, cognitive, and psychological capacity. This research utilizes a design science approach for developing the SeniorDT methodology, which functions as the artifact of this study. Aim of the SeniorDT method is to facilitate older participants’ engagement. This approach is tested in practice and evaluated by observations, group discussions, and interviews. On this basis, the SeniorDT method is presented, and further opportunities and challenges for applying DT with elderly participants are illustrated. Limitations are discussed and implications for further research and practice are derived.

9:45-10:15am Requirements Engineering for the Ageing Population: a Teaching Perspective

    • Amélie Lachapelle-Dagenais (UQAM, Canada), Sébastien Mosser (UQAM, Canada), Anne-Marie Pinna-Dery (Université Côte d’Azur, I3S, CNRS, France), Mireille Blay-Fornarino (Université Côte d’Azur, I3S, CNRS, France)

    • Abstract: Elders occupy an ample space among the potential end-users of the pieces of software we are designing. This situation is only increasing, and even the pessimistic projections forecast global ageing in the World population. In this context, it is our duty as software engineers to design and implement software adapted to elders. However, this particular problem is too often bypassed in the classical software engineering curriculums. In this paper, we report about a set of courses dedicated to requirements engineering for the ageing population, currently implemented at Université Côte d'Azur (UCA, France) and Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM, Canada). We identify challenges related to the ageing population that can be addressed in a course and report on how such courses are implemented in both institutions. The work reported in this paper is validated through an in-depth case study at UCA, based on 18 years of experience in the teaching of requirement engineering for specific populations.

10:15-10:45am Break and Informal Discussions

10:45-11:15am Guidelines for Validation Interviews with Senior Citizens

    • Eduard C. Groen (Fraunhofer IESE, Germany), Svenja Polst (Fraunhofer IESE, Germany)

    • Abstract: In an aging population, technology-based solutions, such as Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) systems are indispensable in supporting senior citizens with retaining their independence. Senior citizens have different physical abilities, contexts of use, and attitudes to technology than younger user groups. This demands a different approach to ascertain their technology acceptance. In the STuDi research project, we constructed an interview guideline based on a survey of the literature on technology acceptance and regarding requirements elicitation and validation with senior citizens, and conducted 33 validation interviews with senior citizens who used a prototypical AAL system for 5–12 months. The guideline facilitated pleasant conversations and helped obtain a good understanding of factors contributing to acceptance versus avoidance and dismissal of the AAL system. We share the findings of our literature survey and the interview guideline, because its design makes it a suitable instrument for researchers and practitioners to measure technology acceptance and/or validate a (prototypical) system with senior citizens, and probably also for requirements elicitation.

11:15-11:45am Creating Mobile Self-Triage Applications: Requirements and Usability Perspectives

    • Mir Kamyar Ziabari (University of Ottawa, ISM, Canada), Daniel Amyot (University of Ottawa, ISM, Canada), Wojtek Michalowski (University of Ottawa, ISM, Canada), El Mostafa Bouattane (Hôpital Montfort, ISM, Canada), Nassoh Hafez (Hôpital Montfort, ISM, Canada)

    • Abstract: Many people visit an emergency department immediately after experiencing some unusual symptoms, without any regard to the scale of acuity of their condition. Some of these visits are unnecessary and lead to overcrowded emergency departments, increased wait times, and overutilization of scarce healthcare resources. At the other end of the spectrum, there are people who do not seek medical advice when they should. One solution to these problems is to provide a reliable source of information that would allow people to assess their need for consulting (self-triage) in a way that helps reduce the number of inappropriate visits and that promotes seeking medical help when necessary. This paper aims to identify requirements that make such self-triage applications usable. To this end, after assessing existing apps, we studied a new self-triage mobile application called Symptoms Pal, co-developed with Montfort Hospital in Ottawa, Canada. This application guides a user through a series of questions and, at the end, provides advice about the possible problem and course of action (911, visit an emergency department, visit a doctor, or self-care). The usability of Symptoms Pal was evaluated by a study involving 34 participants. Several strengths and weaknesses of the usability and perceived usefulness of the application were identified and led to additional requirements and a revised version. This research contributes 25 reusable requirements and validated user interface design artefacts for self-triage mobile applications that can be used by developers of similar applications.

11:45am-12:15pm Eliciting Smartphone App Requirements for Helping Senior People: A Questionnaire Approach

    • Julie R. Rauer (The University of Texas at Dallas, USA), Kirthy Kolluri (The University of Texas at Dallas, USA), Lawrence Chung (The University of Texas at Dallas, USA), Cong Liu (The University of Texas at Dallas, USA), Tom Hill (Fellows Consulting Group, USA)

    • Abstract: The world's unprecedented growth of the senior demographic is bringing key age-related issues to the forefront. Issues such as memory loss, vision impairment, hearing loss, loss of mobility (or loss of dexterity in the hands), and speech loss prevent seniors from interacting with others. We believe that a lot can be done to improve seniors' lives, but current smartphone apps are often not usable or adaptable enough to address these issues. Specifically, current app development practices do not seem to adequately consider seniors' needs and possibly lack a process that includes asking appropriate questions, building relevant scenarios, or coming up with essential requirements. We observe that omitting questions and asking irrelevant or incorrect questions in the requirements elicitation phase needs to be avoided. We propose a Goals, Questions, Scenarios, Requirements (GQSR) elicitation framework as well as an expanded questionnaire approach for requirements elicitation. We develop improved guidelines and rules for questions as part of the question/interview process. Through asking important questions and applying the GQSR framework, we developed the smartphone app, HOPE (Helping Our People Easily), with the intention of helping seniors in their daily lives and alleviating problems such as aphasia. The GQSR framework defines non-functional requirements (NFRs), FRs, questions, and scenarios producing questionnaires for the purposes of interviewing seniors. We achieve traceability between the GQSR Requirements Engineering framework and the HOPE smartphone app. HOPE, a real mobile app targeting seniors, is used to illustrate and evaluate our framework.

12:15-13:00pm REWBAH: Towards a Roadmap

    • All participants!

Are you curious about the first edition of the workshop? Please see:

Goals

The goals of this workshop include, but are not limited to:

  • Developing approaches (including methods, taxonomies/ontologies, models, standard/reusable requirements) that support multiple perspectives of well-being, aging, and health;

  • Developing methods for defining and monitoring requirements of systems and services that promote well-being or health;

  • Considering systematically evidence-based factors of health risk reductions in systems and services;

  • Developing measures or metrics to evaluate the re-turn on investment of models, methods, tools, or techniques that improve patients’ engagement with systems related to well-being or health;

  • Determining whether and how well-being, age, and values can be used as measurable quality properties for requirements;

  • Improving communication and aligning processes among requirements engineering, patients, care-givers and clinicians;

  • Identifying open research and industry challenges, as well as validation objectives for proposed solutions; and

  • Mitigating the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic on our well-being, and helping to determine how technology can improve health-related challenges.

Submissions

REWBAH (pronounced roo-bah) is looking for papers in three general categories (in IEEE CS format):

  • Research/Experience/Review papers (8 to 10 pages including references)

  • Vision papers (6 pages, including references)

  • Short papers (4 pages, including references) in the above categories will also be allowed

Important: papers submitted to the workshop must follow strictly the formatting instructions imposed by the publisher (LaTeX and Word templates are provided).

Submissions shall be done via EasyChair (rewbah2021). Each submission will be reviewed by three members of the REWBAH 2021 Program Committee. Preference will be given to submissions that emphasize informed, topic-relevant, and technically sound descriptions of important challenges and problems as opposed to just proposed solutions.

Workshop proceedings will be published in the IEEE Digital Library. Acceptance of a paper implies that one of the authors registers for the workshop to present the submission; failure to do so by the early registration deadline will result in the paper being withdrawn from the workshop proceedings. IEEE reserves the right to exclude a paper from distribution after the workshop (e.g., by not placing it into the IEEE Digital Library) if the paper is not presented at the workshop.

Important Dates

  • Abstract Submission: Thursday June 24, 2021, AoE (extended)

  • Paper Submission : Thursday July 1st, 2021 (extended)

  • Final Paper : Tuesday July 6th, 2021 (requires submission on July 1st)

  • Paper Notification: Friday, July 23, 2021, AoE

  • Camera Ready Due: Thursday, August 12, 2021, AoE

  • Workshop: September 20, online, as part of the RE'21 conference

Themes of Interest

  • Identifying, prioritizing, and integrating relevant health-related challenges;

  • Elicitation of generic psycho-social and demographic concepts and their potential effects on clinical goals and actions;

  • Health-related requirements acquisition, specification, analysis, and validation;

  • Formal and informal modeling of health-related policies and requirements;

  • Traceability and alignment between clinical guidelines, well-being definitions, aging/health challenges and requirements;

  • Coordinating requirements change and the evolution of health-related guidelines, policies, and regulations;

  • Consideration for age and aging in requirements engineering activities;

  • Integrating guidelines and requirements engineering processes;

  • Introducing existing products and services into new requirements;

  • Requirements for artificial intelligence components in well-being, aging, and health systems and services;

  • Requirements verification: monitoring, documenting, and auditing;

  • Evaluation of the social, mental, health and economic benefits obtained through the use of requirements models, tools, or techniques;

  • Users’ perceptions and sustainable usage of health-related system;

  • Risk, compliance assurance, and system certification;

  • Meaningful, actionable, and trustworthy health-related data management;

  • Health-related processes innovation and transformation;

  • Fairness and social inclusion, cohesion and solidarity;

  • Requirements for global information systems that can help people, decision makers, and researchers during pandemics.

Organization Committee

Daniel Amyot
Organization Co-Chair
University of Ottawa, and
LIFE Research Institute (Canada)

Meira Levy
Organization Co-Chair
Shenkar College of Engineering and Design (Israel)

Lin Liu

Lin Liu
Organization Co-Chair
Tsinghua University (China)

Eric Yu
Program Chair
University of Toronto (Canada)

Program Committee

Call for Papers

REWBAH is an RE'21 workshop. Join us and participate!

Here is the Call for Papers (one page, letter format) in PDF, also available in PNG (to the left).