@inproceedings{a3bb802b09e84c3a8ea9b32a65defeb3,
title = "POP-PL: A patient-oriented prescription programming language",
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 domainspecific 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.",
keywords = "DSL Design, Empirical Evaluation, Medical Prescriptions, Medical Programming Languages",
author = "Florence, \{Spencer P.\} and Burke Fetscher and Matthew Flatt and Temps, \{William H.\} and Tina Kiguradze and West, \{Dennis P\} and Charlotte Niznik and Yarnold, \{Paul R.\} and Robert Findler and Belknap, \{Steven M\}",
year = "2015",
month = oct,
day = "26",
doi = "10.1145/2814204.2814221",
language = "English (US)",
series = "GPCE 2015 - Proceedings of the 2015 ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Generative Programming: Concepts and Experiences",
publisher = "Association for Computing Machinery, Inc",
pages = "131--140",
editor = "Christian Kastner and Aniruddha Gokhale",
booktitle = "GPCE 2015 - Proceedings of the 2015 ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Generative Programming",
note = "14th ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Generative Programming: Concepts and Experiences, GPCE 2015 ; Conference date: 26-10-2015 Through 27-10-2015",
}