Initial Case Study Findings for Requirements on Work-Related Health Aspects

Most work implies the use of digital systems and tools, thus, digital technology plays a vital role in modern work environments. Even so, ergonomics and usability of IT systems and digital tools used at work are often weak, which causes work-related health problems including physical, visual, cognitive, and stress-related issues. We pose that one important reason for these types of issues is the lack of methods and guidelines for how to include usability and ergonomics in requirements engineering, in general, and, in particular, when procuring digital systems for use in the workplace. In our ongoing research project, we are exploring how work-related health aspects are handled in requirements specifications used for public procurement of IT systems for municipal care and health care services. We have acquired procurement documentation from 92 (of 290) Swedish municipalities and are in the process of performing qualitative content analysis of a subset of these. In this paper, we describe our overall research approach and provide some initial observations based on analysis of three public procurements. We observe a variation in how requirements specifications are structured and present an initial set of work-related health aspects to consider when specifying requirements for IT systems to be used in the workplace.