Improving system quality through software evaluation

The role of evaluation is examined with respect to quality of software in healthcare. Of particular note is the failure of the Therac-25 radiation therapy machine. This example provides evidence of several types of defect which could have been detected and corrected using appropriate evaluation procedures. The field of software engineering has developed metrics and guidelines to assist in software evaluation but this example indicates that software evaluation must be extended beyond the formally defined interfaces of the software to its real-life operating context. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.