Authors:
Ali Raza
and
Stephen Clyde
Affiliation:
Utah State University, United States
Keyword(s):
Test data extraction, Test data generation, Testing database applications, Semantic-based data extraction, Integrated systems, Integrated healthcare systems.
Related
Ontology
Subjects/Areas/Topics:
Biomedical Engineering
;
Cloud Computing
;
Confidentiality and Data Security
;
Databases and Datawarehousing
;
Design and Development Methodologies for Healthcare IT
;
e-Health
;
Health Information Systems
;
Platforms and Applications
;
Semantic Interoperability
Abstract:
Testing an integrated information system that relies on data from multiple sources can be a serious challenge, particularly when the data is confidential. Such is the case for the Child-Health Advanced Record Management (CHARM) system, which is now in production at the Utah Department of Health. CHARM allows various public health-care programs, like vital records, immunization, and hearing screening, to seamlessly access data from each others’ databases in real-time. Since CHARM deals with confidential health-care information, it was impossible to use real data for testing purposes, especially since the development and testing environments were outside the confidential environment in which CHARM operates. This paper describes a test-data extraction tool built and successfully used for testing the CHARM system. This tool, called Semantic based Test Data Extractor for Integrated Systems or iSTDE, reads a consistent cross-section of data from the production databases, manipulates that
data to obscure individual identities while preserving overall data characteristics that are critical to thorough system testing, and finally moves that test data from the confidential production environment to the unprotected test environment.
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