More than Psychologists' Chitchat: The importance of Cognitive Modeling for Requirements Engineering in Complex and Dynamic Environments

Anaesthesiology is practiced within a complex and dynamic socio-technical system that can reach an infinite number of states. Therefore, traditional methods of requirements engineering are not suited to model the tasks and support requirements of the anaesthetist. We introduce an approach for developing decision support systems in anaesthesiology based on cognitive modelling. It is demonstrated that the complexity of the problem space can be reduced to enable the design of a working prototype of a decision support system. This system estimates the cognitive workload of the user, and offers tailored decision support depending on the state of patient. Since anaesthesiology is a typical example of a complex and dynamic environment, the implications of using cognitive modelling for requirements engineering can be transferred to similar contexts.

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