"Partnering with a testing specialist like Planit amplified our velocity, both in technical design and delivery of patient risk to clinicians to clearly inform subsequent clinical actions."
Dr Leonard Hoon
Senior Research Fellow, Deakin University
Understanding the immense importance of this app to the community, Planit immediately responded. Our involvement commenced in the initial stages of the PiMS pilot project, where user interface (UI) requirements and business rules were being established.
Like any health crisis, time is of the essence. After consultation with key stakeholders to understand strategic goals, a risk-based test approach was adopted, with risk ratings to assess and test critical components. We quickly devised a plan of action involving local and remote delivery teams during the lockdown period.
One of the key areas where testing would be concentrated was the logic rules for the UI. This was to ensure that the expected content or information is correctly provided to the app user.
Business rules was another area that was prioritised for testing. This would ensure patients were receiving the right condition based on the patient’s COVID-19 symptoms and diagnosis.
This then graded the patient mild (green), moderate (yellow), and severe (red), also taking into account age, sex and current medical conditions. This means that patients with mild conditions would receive less frequent notifications from the app, while those with severe symptoms are followed up with by nurses and escalated to paramedics or hospitals when appropriate The app also has a set of corresponding actions, which includes sending text messages and/or notifications to the clinician monitoring the patient.
The core of the testing was focused on System Integration Testing (SIT) cases. By testing the integrated hardware and software environments, we were able to verify the behaviour of the app and evaluate its compliance with the specified requirements.