Experiences from Model-Driven Development of Homecare Services: UML Profiles and Domain Models

Model-driven development approaches such as Model Driven Architecture (MDA) have been proposed as the new paradigm for software development. The adoption of MDA is still low, partly because of the general-purpose modelling language being used. Domain specific modelling languages are being developed for technological and industrial domains to improve the expressiveness and effect of model-driven development techniques. The healthcare domain could benefit from these methodologies. In order to incorporate domain knowledge in a MDA process, information about workflows, artefacts and actors can be formalized in a UML profile and applied by MDA tools for design and development. This paper presents the work done on model-driven development of smart homecare services in the MPOWER project. Following an iterative approach, two UML profiles to support development of Service Oriented Architecture based homecare applications are proposed. Using homecare specific UML profiles indicate an improvement in the process for model-driven development of homecare services.