Leveraging Software Engineering Practices to Enhance Nursing Informatics Systems Development: A Systematic Literature Review

Nursing informatics (NI) integrates nursing knowledge with IT, making a difference in patient outcomes as well as better healthcare processes. Software Engineering (SE) principles deliver quality, efficiency, and optimal industry requirements in the NI system development process. This systematic literature review focuses on SE practices and their integration into NI systems development. Identifying, evaluating, and synthesizing relevant studies systematically using Parsifal were done in the review. Articles from peer-reviewed journals published in English from 2000 to 2023, SE and NI integration were among the selection criteria. In total, 26 studies were identified upon a screening process of the results from the search that yielded 202 unique and relevant studies. The PRISMA statement guides the process, ensuring transparency and reproducibility. A quality assessment checklist was employed to evaluate the study for final selection. Articles were analyzed based on SE methodologies applied to NI development either implied or explicit.The results show that SE practices, including Software Development, User-Centered Design, Prototyping, Agile Methodologies, Requirements Engineering, and Security Measures contribute to the improvement of NI system development. These practices provide advantages like efficiency, system quality, security, and system maintenance and evolution. Obstacles involve cultural differences, regulatory issues, and resource limitations. In this regard, there are several recommendations for promoting the successful implementation of SE practices into NI systems development through collaboration, agile methodologies, adaption to a healthcare context, and continuous education and training. This is to promote cooperation, adapting SE methodologies to the needs of health care and providing better understanding between software engineers and nurses.