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POP-PL: a patient-oriented prescription programming language

Published: 26 October 2015 Publication History

Abstract

Medical professionals have long used algorithmic thinking to describe and implement health care processes without the benefit of the conceptual framework provided by a programming language. Instead, medical algorithms are expressed using English, flowcharts, or data tables. This results in prescriptions that are difficult to understand, hard to debug, and awkward to reuse. This paper reports on the design and evaluation of a domain-specific programming language, POP-PL for expressing medical algorithms. The design draws on the experience of researchers in two disciplines, programming languages and medicine. The language is based around the idea that programs and humans have complementary strengths, that when combined can make for safer, more accurate performance of prescriptions. We implemented a prototype of our language and evaluated its design by writing prescriptions in the new language and administering a usability survey to medical professionals. This formative evaluation suggests that medical prescriptions can be conveyed by a programming language's mode of expression and provides useful information for refining the language. Analysis of the survey results suggests that medical professionals can understand and correctly modify programs in POP-PL.

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  • (2019)A calculus for Esterel: if can, can. if no can, no can.Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/32903743:POPL(1-29)Online publication date: 2-Jan-2019
  • (2019)Using language workbenches and domain-specific languages for safety-critical software developmentSoftware and Systems Modeling (SoSyM)10.1007/s10270-018-0679-018:4(2507-2530)Online publication date: 1-Aug-2019
  • (2017)Debugging with domain-specific events via macrosProceedings of the 10th ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Software Language Engineering10.1145/3136014.3136019(91-102)Online publication date: 23-Oct-2017
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cover image ACM Conferences
GPCE 2015: Proceedings of the 2015 ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Generative Programming: Concepts and Experiences
October 2015
184 pages
ISBN:9781450336871
DOI:10.1145/2814204
  • cover image ACM SIGPLAN Notices
    ACM SIGPLAN Notices  Volume 51, Issue 3
    GPCE '15
    March 2016
    184 pages
    ISSN:0362-1340
    EISSN:1558-1160
    DOI:10.1145/2936314
    • Editor:
    • Andy Gill
    Issue’s Table of Contents
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

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Publication History

Published: 26 October 2015

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Author Tags

  1. DSL Design
  2. Empirical Evaluation
  3. Med- ical Prescriptions
  4. Medical Programming Languages

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  • Research-article

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GPCE'15
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GPCE'15: Generative Programming: Concepts and Experiences
October 26 - 27, 2015
PA, Pittsburgh, USA

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Overall Acceptance Rate 56 of 180 submissions, 31%

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Cited By

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  • (2019)A calculus for Esterel: if can, can. if no can, no can.Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/32903743:POPL(1-29)Online publication date: 2-Jan-2019
  • (2019)Using language workbenches and domain-specific languages for safety-critical software developmentSoftware and Systems Modeling (SoSyM)10.1007/s10270-018-0679-018:4(2507-2530)Online publication date: 1-Aug-2019
  • (2017)Debugging with domain-specific events via macrosProceedings of the 10th ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Software Language Engineering10.1145/3136014.3136019(91-102)Online publication date: 23-Oct-2017
  • (2017)Herbarium Racketensis: a stroll through the woods (functional pearl)Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/31102451:ICFP(1-15)Online publication date: 29-Aug-2017
  • (2021)A Domain-Specific Language for Payroll Calculations: An Experience Report from DATEVDomain-Specific Languages in Practice10.1007/978-3-030-73758-0_4(93-130)Online publication date: 15-Apr-2021
  • (2019)Prescriptive Grammar for Clinical Prescribing WorkflowInternational Journal of Extreme Automation and Connectivity in Healthcare10.4018/IJEACH.20190101091:1(96-110)Online publication date: 1-Jan-2019
  • (2019)Using language workbenches and domain-specific languages for safety-critical software developmentSoftware and Systems Modeling (SoSyM)10.1007/s10270-018-0679-018:4(2507-2530)Online publication date: 1-Aug-2019

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