Towards a Framework for Evaluating Usability of Business Process Models with BPMN in Health Sector

Abstract The importance of the analysis, modelling and management of a business process is not restricted to a specific enterprise sector. In the field of health management, as a result of the nature of the service offered, health institutions’ processes are also the basis for decision making which is focused on achieving their objective of providing quality medical assistance. Business processes in hospitals are very complex and variable. BPMN (Business Process Model and Notation) is a user-oriented language specifically designed for the modelling of business (organizational) processes. The objective of this work is to show the experience obtained in the creation of the conceptual models of certain hospital processes which can be used as a basis for others in collaboration with hospitals in order to model their processes using BPMN. In first instance, the processes were modeled with purposes to apply metrics for measuring the usability as a software quality attribute according to standard ISO 9126. The next challenge is to evaluate the usability of the models from the point of view of the user according to standard ISO 9241-11 that defines usability as “the extent to which a product can be used by specified users to achieve specified goals with effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction in a specified context of use”. Starting from usability engineering, a proposal of a framework that considers evaluation criteria about previously modeled processes with BPMN results necessary. In order to achieve the framework are considered studies on the usability evaluation for business process modeling tools and languages.