week two
june 20 - june 24


  Monday, June 20:

Today I traced through the Blood Transfusion and Emergency Room processes in LittleJIL, adding descriptive comments that would help me understand the flow of the process.  I also started a very basic website to submit to the CRA-W for the DMP.  It's only text and frames, with a few pictures, but eventually, I'd really like the site to be more complex and hold additional content than what's required.  For now, it just has the quick facts about me, my mentor, the extracurricular activities I participate in, my goals for the summer, and, of course, these journals. 



Tuesday, June 21:

Today, we received a new process from BayState Medical Hospital: Adult Outpatient Chemotherapy.  The doctor who sent it described the process in somewhat ordered steps, so I spent much of the day attempting to understand exactly what she meant by some of the medical terms, medical positions and roles, as well as the ordering of steps.  I re-read the process many times, trying to order and place the agents, artifacts, and actions in my mind, but I found that the best way of understanding the process was to iteratively write the steps in "plain english" instead of the doctor's shortened steps and implied subjects and/or agents.  I created three "plain english" descriptions of the Adult Outpatient Chemotherapy process:  "Initiate", "Prepare", and "Perform AO Chemo". 



Wednesday, June 22:

From the "plain english" descriptions I created yesterday, I was easily able to make a list of agents, artifacts, and actions involved in the Adult Outpatient Chemotherapy process.  I also kept a running list of the verbs I used to be consistent in the actions of certain agents, like using "schedule" instead of "book", "make appointment for", or other common phrases, just to add some consistency to the diagrams.  The first diagram I created today was the "Initiate AO Chemo" sample.  I brought it to today's Process Group (those who deal with the LittleJIL language itself, not the evaluation of the products it produces) meeting, and received some great feedback about the meanings of the symbols I chose to represent actions in the process.  From there, I was able to further refine my diagram to perhaps something closer to what I actually meant to portray.  In the Process Meeting, we also discussed the demonstration of several case studies that we have used the LittleJIL software for, including the medical safety cases, so I will be making a small presentation of the AO Chemo process to a small group on Monday or Tuesday, during the "Process Days" to improve the LittleJIL language.



Thursday, June 23:

  Today, I worked on the Adult Outpatient Chemotherapy process' LittleJIL diagrams, tweaking the wording and ordering of steps.  I also met with Dr. Lori Clarke, my mentor, for our first weekly meeting.  We discussed the AO Chemo process, the methods for communicating with the doctors and nurses at Baystate Hospital to clarify things in the process, and difficulties in the semantics of the LittleJIL language that I came across while trying to portray certain pre- and post-conditions.  We also discussed the DMP website that I had been working on, and she recommended Rachel for help with web design.  Finally, we made a list of solid goals to work towards by the end of the summer.  Most of them involve generic planning for graduate school and/or a career in Computer Science, but several are more specific (to improve writing skills, to become adjusted to MA, etc).  It is great to have Dr. Clarke as a mentor because she has a much more realistic point of view than I do regarding the Graduate School application/admission process.



Friday, June 24:

  Friday, woohoo!  Today, I worked more on my DMP website and my AO Chemo LittleJIL diagrams.  We had a Medical Safety meeting this morning, and Beth Henneman, an instructor in the Nursing program here at UMass, provided a great perspective on the AO Chemo process.  She answered tons of questions for me and looked at the diagrams I had created for the "Initiation" process.  I think she will be a great immediate resource for questions because the doctors I have contact with are extremely deprived of time to answer e-mails.  I've also begun to call my mom, a Registered Nurse, just to ask about medical procedures and terms in general.  She was really helpful in explaining the Chemotherapy process in terms that I could understand.  And she approved of my work: "Finally, you're doing something USEFUL with computers!"