Information System for Doping Control

Francisco Medeiros

, Juliana Medeiros

, Fausto Ayres

, Caio Viana

, Josemary Rocha

Victor Viegas

, Eder Mendes

and Ana Santos

Federal Institute of Education, Science and Technology of Paraíba (IFPB), João Pessoa-PB, Brazil

University Center of João Pessoa (UNIPÊ), João Pessoa-PB, Brazil

Institute of Higher Education of Paraíba (IESP), João Pessoa-PB, Brazil

Integrated College of Patos (FIP), Patos-PB, Brazil

Keywords: Information System, Doping Control, Knowledge Management, Athletes’ Health.

Abstract: It is apparent that regulators, sponsors, athletes and sports organizations have become more and more

concerned about doping control. Despite the investments made in the past few years, recent studies show

that Brazil´s sports confederations have not systematized the doping control process nor have they yet dealt

satisfactorily with problems to do with transparency with regard to disclosing the results of tests. This study

puts forward an Information System to support the Confederations in reviewing and implementing anti-

doping measures and procedures. It is also hoped that the proposed integrated database of doping tests can

help managers to draw up a public policy for this area.

1 INTRODUCTION

Doping control in Sport is a complex challenge. This

is a reason for the bodies responsible for its

regulation at the national as well as global context to

be concerned. We are constantly made aware of

news of cases, in various sports, of doping. This is

damaging to the notion of the Olympic spirit, harms

athletes’ health and undermines the values of sport.

Many types of investments have been made by the

Federal Government of Brazil in order to make

progress in this matter. One example was the

creation of the Brazilian Anti-Doping Authority

(ABCD, in Portuguese) in 2011.

The doping control process in Brazil is

undergoing structural changes that will take place

prior to the Olympic Games in 2016. Those that

stand out are cooperation with overseas laboratories

and the re-accreditation of the Brazilian Laboratory

for Doping Control (LBCD, in Portuguese) by the

World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA, 2015).

However, despite the investments already made,

as described in ABCD's Annual Report (ABCD,

2013), a number of actions still need to be

implemented to overcome the challenges in this

area. One such current problem is the lack of up-to-

date information on doping control, which has an

adverse impact on drawing up anti-doping public

policies. Access to up-to-date and reliable

information is a basic condition for decision making.

The Brazilian Olympic Committee (COB in

Portuguese) oversees 52 confederations of various

sports, including 30 Olympic National Federations,

19 Bound National Federations and 3 Recognised

National Federations. Bound and Recognised

federations are those that cover sports that are not

included as Olympic sports (COB, 2015). However,

the transparency of the confederations as to positive

cases is not satisfactory and neither is their verdict

on these. The main confederations have deficiencies

in doping control and in making data public.

In this context, the general objective of this

research was to develop an information system for

the purpose of supporting the confederations in the

doping control process and thereby to provide up-to-

date information that might assist decision making

and the formation of public policy in Brazil.

2 BACKGROUND

ADAMS (2015) is a WADA system for managing

doping tests that stores the tests that have been

conducted by accredited laboratories.

432

Medeiros, F., Medeiros, J., Ayres, F., Viana, C., Rocha, J., Viegas, V., Mendes, E. and Santos, A.

Information System for Doping Control.

DOI: 10.5220/0005817304320437

In Proceedings of the 9th International Joint Conference on Biomedical Engineering Systems and Technologies (BIOSTEC 2016) - Volume 5: HEALTHINF, pages 432-437

ISBN: 978-989-758-170-0

Confederations that have an agreement with WADA

can access the ADAMS system (view only).

The objective of the Information System

developed in this project, called the System for

Doping Control (SCDP, in Portuguese), is to support

anti-doping measures, thereby complementing

ADAMS, by providing functionalities that ADAMS

does not have. SCDP sets out to be active

throughout the doping control process. These

include functionalities to purchase doping kits, to

select the athletes to be tested, to complete the

doping form, to detail the results, and to initiate

hearings and pass sentences when tests are positive.

The scope of ADAMS, for the confederations, is

restricted to consulting the results of the tests

conducted by accredited laboratories.

Currently, when undertaken, doping control is

performed independently by each sports

organization (confederation, association, etc.) with

the support of spreadsheets and documents but there

is no database and no support from any software. In

addition, there is no standardization between the

sports bodies. Thus, the regulators in Brazil do not

have a consolidated view of the process used. Nor is

there accurate, detailed and up-to-date information

about the tests that would enable a thorough analysis

of doping, for example, by region, sport, prohibited

substance or age group.

The Athlete Scholarship Program of the Brazil

(Bolsa Atleta, 2014) lays down the non-violation of

anti-doping rules as an additional requirement that

candidates for this award must meet and sets out

penalties for holders of this award who violate the

anti-doping rules. However, due to there being no

automated and centralized control, this Program

does not hold up-to-date information on positive

tests. Therefore, it is dependent on information that

it obtains from the press, based on accusations, or

from the Confederations. Figure 1 shows the context

in which the SCDP project is placed.

Figure 1: Context of the Doping Control System.

3 METHODOLOGY USED

This section describes the methods and techniques

used to conduct this project.

3.1 Mapping the Doping Control of the

Sports Bodies

An exploratory study was conducted to answer the

following research question: How is doping control

currently being carried out by sports bodies? Two

university researchers conducted this activity.

Initially the team contacted the Confederations

based on contact information provided by COB. E-

mails were sent to all confederations. In addition,

some confederations were contacted by phone and

eight confederations were visited in person. The

techniques used for data collection were: i)

interviews and ii) analysis of documents. The

interviews were conducted at the headquarters of the

Confederations with the officials responsible for

doping control. The purpose of these interviews was

to understand the process that the Confederations

used and the difficulties they face. During the

interviews, documents were collected such as forms,

and test results. In addition, other documents

available on the Confederations’ websites were

analyzed. These included sentences passed at

hearings of athletes who were caught by the doping

tests. The analysis of the information collected at

this stage guided the next step, the purpose of which

was to develop the system to support the

Confederations as to doping control.

ABCD helped in this process by providing

information about the actions that it was conducting

with regard to doping control and to formalizing the

researchers’ role with the sports Confederations.

Several confederations were examined in this

process. However, since the Brazilian Athletics

Confederation (CBAT, in Portuguese) is the

exemplar model for Doping Control in Brazil, it was

used as the main source of information and to

validate the functionalities of the SCDP system.

3.2 Development Process

The Information System is being developed using

Scrum (

Schwaber, 1995), and follows PMBOK

(Project Management Body of Knowledge) practices

(PMI, 2013). An interactive and incremental

development process, called Business Requirement

Agile Process (BRAP) was used (Medeiros, 2015).

The process is divided into four sub-processes that

are repeated in each monthly cycle of development

Information System for Doping Control

433

(Sprint), as illustrated in Figure 2: Backlog

Management, Refinement of the Requirements,

Coding (Development) and Conclusion. Each sprint

includes a subset of functionalities (requirements) of

the backlog of the project.

Figure 2: Development process used.

To date, 14 people have been involved in the

project: 1 coordinator, 2 researchers, 1 analyst, 4

programmers and 6 trainee students. However, not

all staff worked throughout the project. The project

coordinator is responsible for executive

management, details what activities are to be done

and monitors their implementation. Moreover, she is

responsible for reporting information on the progress

of the project to the project partners, whenever

requested.

3.2.1 Managing the Backlog

Based on the face-to-face interviews in the

confederations, the initial Product Backlog (PB) of

the project was drafted. After validating the PB with

CBAT, planning was conducted during which the

requirements were distributed in Sprints in

accordance with the priorities established by CBAT

and ABCD. The project uses the Redmine tool to

support management, thus controlling the demands

allocated to the team.

3.2.2 Refining the Requirements

At the start of each Sprint, the structure of the

database is modeled and includes all the

requirements of the Sprint. Then, for each

requirement, the mockups (prototypes of the

interface with the user) are drawn up and the related

rules are specified. These activities are conducted

simultaneously by the analyst with the support of the

CBAT users and the supervision of the researchers.

When the refinement of a requirement is finalized, it

is immediately made available for encoding.

The requirements are specified using the

template defined in BRAP which links the user’s

rules, and the mockups and data structure with each

other. The document is prepared in MS Word. The

mockups are built on the Pencil tool and the data

model is designed in the Astah tool.

3.2.3 Coding

This step is performed by the programmers and

trainees. One of the programmers plays the role of a

software architect and is also responsible for

carrying out the weekly deploys. The programming

language chosen to develop the software was Java,

version 7, on the EE (Enterprise Edition) platform.

The software has a 3-layer architecture,

following the Model-View-Controller (MVC)

standard (Fowler, 2003) of software architecture that

separates the business logic from the interface with

the user, as shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3: Architecture of the application.

Within the Java EE platform, Java Server Faces

(JSF) technology was used. The PrimeFaces library

was chosen as an extension of components and

resources for JSF. In the Java persistence API (JPA)

layer, the Hibernate 3.5 framework was chosen in

order to reduce the complexity of communication

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with the PostGreSQL 9 database that was used in the

project.

Spring Security 3 was used as a security

alternative of the Java EE specification, thus

offering an authentication and authorization

mechanism for the web application. When the

project was being developed, the testing team used

the JUnit framework, which supports automated

tests in Java. The management of project

dependencies was carried out with Maven 3. By

doing so, it was possible to manage the builds,

standardize the development environment, and to

simplify the creation and distribution of the project.

For the control version of the source code of the

application, the development team used the Apache

Subversion (aka svn). The project runs on an Apache

Tomcat 7 web server.

3.2.4 Conclusion of Each Sprint

Every week, whenever a new version of the

application is made available with new

functionalities, acceptance tests are conducted. The

non-conformities found are reported in Redmine and

sent for correction in the specification or software.

At the end of each Sprint, the application is made

available for validation. Some functionalities have

already been validated with CBAT and others with

ABCD.

4 EVALUATION OF THE

RESULTS

4.1 Current Situation of Doping

Control in Brazil

The doping control process currently carried out by

the confederations was analyzed as was the level of

transparency with regard to the disclosure of doping

cases. In addition to the interviews with those

responsible for doping control in eight Olympic

federations, the sites of the Confederations were also

checked to analyze the doping tests that were sent to

the Upper Court for Sports Justice (STJD, in

Portuguese) of the Confederations. These data were

synthesized so as to make it possible to answer the

research question of this study.

Of the 30 Olympic federations, 23 have

information on the STJD, on their websites.

Nonetheless, the absolute figures on the

transparency of doping cases held in Brazil are

alarming: among the fifty-two confederations

analyzed, only eight make data available on their site

that can be consulted efficiently. On the large

majority of these sites, there is no access to case

hearings held nor any mention of any control carried

out in relation to doping.

During the survey conducted on the site of the

Confederations, no information was found on any of

these sites as to the number of tests carried out nor to

negative results. The sites only held information on

positive tests which had been sent on to the STJD.

Even so, only 7 Confederations (all Olympic ones)

held such information on their sites, a total of 116

cases, namely: the Brazilian Confederation of

Cycling (35), followed by the Athletics

Confederation (33), Football (21) and Equestrianism

(21). Canoeing appears with 4 cases disclosed and

Basketball and Shooting with just one each, as

shown in Table 1. None of the other confederations

showed any information on doping cases referred to

the STJD on their sites at the time of the survey

(until February/2015).

Table 1: Doping tests sent on to the Sports Tribunal (up to

February/2015).

2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 SUM

thletics

6 5 2 5 6 9 33

asketball

1 1

anoeing

1 3 4

ycling

2 9 3 5 10 1 5 35

questrianis

4 3 5 7 2 21

ootball

2 12 7 21

hooting

1 1

116

The WADA anti-doping code sets organizations

responsible for doping control deadlines by which to

disclose the results that must be made public.

However, the results of the analysis carried out on

the site of the Confederations demonstrate the need

to improve the transparency of this information. The

identity of the athlete who violated a rule can only

be revealed after the test result has been confirmed

and the athlete’s defense has been heard.

Nevertheless, it was noted that the confederations do

not even provide quantitative information on the

tests.

It should be pointed out that there are cases of

Confederations that did not have records on their

websites of cases on which sentences have been

passed and reported in the mainstream media. These

include the Confederations of Jiu-jitsu, Water

Sports, Gymnastics and Motoring. This group

includes sports that receive federal incentive

programs such as the Athlete scholarship.

Besides few confederations making information

available, there are also limitations as to the quality

Information System for Doping Control

435

of information. Data are very often incomplete and

disorganized, with decisions and legal remedies not

being shown together, for example. In most of the

Confederations, there are not enough details about

the hearings. Very often there is not even access

given to the report of the defense offered by the

accused. Moreover, we identified that some

Confederations do not disclose the substances found

in the tests but only the final decision and the

penalty. Some Confederations claim that the high

costs involved make it impossible to conduct and

control doping tests.

In all the confederations analyzed, the absence of

an information system to support the professionals

involved was noted. Except for CBAT, there is an

alarming need to systematize the doping control

process. Another challenge identified is the need to

improve the transparency of reporting the legal

hearings and outcomes of doping tests.

In order to validate the understanding of the

doping control process, a flow chart has been drawn

up to describe the activities involved throughout this

process (SCDP, 2015). This flow chart is one of the

contributions of this article. It is hoped that it will

serve to guide the Confederations as to how to

systematize their procedures on doping control.

CBAT has validated this flow chart.

4.2 Functionalities Made Available by

the Information System

Figure 4 illustrates the 7 modules (Administrative,

Configuration, Access Control, Doping, Statistics,

Sports Justice and General Use) that make up the

system and the Webservice which is being

developed to make the confirmed doping tests

available. To date, the Product Backlog (PB) has

133 functionalities including registrations, queries

and reports.

Figure 4: Modules of the System.

The web service being developed will enable

integration with other programs, for example, the

Athlete Scholarship, thereby ensuring not only that

the award is not granted to athletes who are under

suspension due to doping but also that it is cancelled

immediately after the final confirmation of a positive

test.

Some examples of actions that can be taken with

the help of the data analysis provided by the

Integrated System are:

 Increasing the conduct of anti-doping tests in

the sports in which the number of tests

conducted is low;

 Investigating the good practices that are being

applied with regard to anti-doping control of

the sports in which the rates of testing are high;

 Investigating the reasons for the high incidence

of positive tests in certain prohibited

substances;

 Investigating what the age groups, gender,

categories, cities, regions of the country are

that need tighter awareness-raising monitoring.

Table 2 shows the current number of

functionalities by module and by status.

Table 2: Functionalities by Module and by Status.

Module Functionalities

ADMINISTRATIVE 30

DOPING 42

SPORTS JUSTICE 20

GENERAL USE 10

CONFIGURATION 15

ACCESS CONTROL 6

STATISTICS 10

TOTAL 133

Status Functionalities

Concluded 71

Being tested 8

Being implemented 10

Being corrected 14

Allocated to the next Sprints 30

5 CONCLUSIONS

This research involved designing an information

system that can support the confederations to

implement doping controls with regard to their

athletes by feeding a database with integrated

information, which hitherto has not been done in

Brazil.

With this information, managers of sports

organizations will be better prepared to make

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strategic decisions and to formulate public policies

aimed at improving anti-doping measures in Brazil.

It is hoped that the system will contribute to raising

athletes’ awareness of the harm that doping can

cause to their health. A relevant study in this area

was conducted by Lipicer (2014), who examined the

impact of global anti-doping initiatives on the

Republic of Slovenia, sports policies and the role of

wider national political and legal frameworks.

This project also served as a case study to

validate and optimize a new process created to

specify requirements in agile projects. As to future

research, we plan to evaluate the possibility of

integrating this system with ADAMS. In addition, it

is intended to provide a game for mobile devices that

can in a fun way to help athletes to know the

prohibited substances.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This research was supported by CNPq (The National

Council for Development, Science and Technology)

by Notice 91/2013, nº 487777/2013-1, to whom we

are grateful for making it possible for us to have the

resources needed to carry out this project.

We thank the Brazilian Confederation of

Equestrianism for being our partner for the

submission of the project; the Brazilian Athletics

Confederation for providing information and

validating some functionalities of the system; the

Confederations of Baseball, Boxing, Canoeing,

Snow Sports, Fencing, Rugby and Taekwondo who

took part in face-to-face interviews; and finally, the

Brazilian Anti-Doping Authority (ABCD) for the

institutional support needed to conduct this project.

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