36th Annual Student Research Conference
Developing Software to Improve Osteopathic Diagnostic Technique
Luciana L. Scuderi
Dr. Don Bindner and Dr. Brian Degenhardt (A.T. Still University), Faculty Mentors
One goal of the A.T. Still Research Institute is to improve the ability of physicians to diagnose asymmetries in the body. They use custom software to give medical students graphical feedback on their ability to push on the human body symmetrically and with a specified amount of force. We were asked to improve a version of this software that had known problems: hardcoded testing protocols limited flexibility, and the program was intolerant of poor data and crashed regularly. We improved the flexibility of the code to allow for the introduction of new testing protocols and added an array of new features requested by lab technicians. To make the software less brittle, we incorporated safeguards against user error where possible, and otherwise returned useful error messages allowing for easy data correction.
Keywords: software, medicine, osteopathy , R, statistical programming
Topic(s):Computer Science
Presentation Type: Oral Presentation
Session: 209-1
Location: MG 1098
Time: 10:15