Background and motivation: INCA (Intelligent Control Assistant for Diabetes) is a project funded by the EU with the objective to improve diabetes therapy by creating a personal control loop interacting with telemedical remote control. Development of telemedical systems generally is a complex task especially in international projects where engineering and user groups with different social and cultural background have to be included into the system development process.
Objectives: To explore if and how sophisticated information system modelling and simulation techniques can improve the development of telemedical systems.
Methods: For system analysis and design the MOSAIK-M approach was chosen. MOSAIK-M means "Modelling, simulation, and animation of information and communication systems in medicine". It includes a generic process scheme, a meta model and a tool environment. The generic process scheme guides modelling projects to produce models of high quality in terms of correctness, completeness and validity. The meta model defines the modelling language.In INCA MOSAIK-M is used for analysis of the problem domain, specification of the telemedical system and cost/benefit-analysis.
Results: The MOSAIK-M approach was used to create two models: an "As Is"-model of the problem domain and a "To Be"-model of the INCA system. The "As Is"-model of conventional insulin pump based diabetes care comprises submodels of diabetes management, ambulatory and clinical care. The "To Be"-model describes a patient's diabetes management using a smart phone that controls an insulin pump based on continuously measured interstitial glucose. It also describes telemedical care of a patient by diabetologists and a call centre. Both models can be simulated enhanced by visualisation capabilities to explore specific cases or scenarios. This feature proved valuable for the evaluation of both models through domain experts. The "To Be" model is used to guide the implementation of the system. Both models are being augmented by cost structures to support cost/benefit-analysis.
Conclusions: Even a complex telemedical system like the INCA system can be successfully specified using sophisticated modelling and simulation based approaches like MOSAIK-M. The resulting specification is a result of its own and ensures a lasting effect of the definitions and specifications produced during the project. International cooperation and evaluation of the system design prior to its implementation profit from simulation and visualisation capabilities of MOSAIK-M.