ScholarlyCommons: Repository

Title

On Effective Testing of Health Care Simulation Software

Author(s)

Christian Murphy, University of PennsylvaniaFollow
M. S. Raunak, Loyola University Maryland, BaltimoreFollow
Andrew King, University of PennsylvaniaFollow
Sanjian Chen, University of PennsylvaniaFollow
Christopher Imbriano, University of PennsylvaniaFollow
Gail Kaiser, Columbia UniversityFollow
Insup Lee, University of PennsylvaniaFollow
Oleg Sokolsky, University of PennsylvaniaFollow
Lori Clarke, University of Massachusetts AmherstFollow
Leon Osterweil, University of Massachusetts AmherstFollow

Document Type

Conference Paper

Date of this Version

5-2011

Comments

3rd International Workshop on Software Engineering in Health Care (SEHC 2011)
May 22-23, 2011
Honolulu, Hawaii

Also available as Technical report http://repository.upenn.edu/cis_reports/949/

Abstract

Health care professionals rely on software to simulate anatomical and physiological elements of the human body for purposes of training, prototyping, and decision making. Software can also be used to simulate medical processes and protocols to measure cost effectiveness and resource utilization. Whereas much of the software engineering research into simulation software focuses on validation (determining that the simulation accurately models real-world activity), to date there has been little investigation into the testing of simulation software itself, that is, the ability to effectively search for errors in the implementation. This is particularly challenging because often there is no test oracle to indicate whether the results of the simulation are correct. In this paper, we present an approach to systematically testing simulation software in the absence of test oracles, and evaluate the effectiveness of the technique.

Keywords

Reliability, Verification, Software Testing, Oracle Problem, Metamorphic Testing, PRECISE_paper, PRECISE_CPS_Medical