Quality Evaluation of Poison Control Information Systems: A Case Study of the DATATOX System

Poison Control Centres (PCCs) provide information and advise about poisoning, poisoning case management, and toxicovigilance activities. They are supported by information systems that help physicians and toxicologists to attend cases of patient exposure to poisonous agents. Still, there is no consensus on how to evaluate software quality of such systems. This work performs a case study applying a customized software quality evaluation model -- the AdEQUATE model -- in order to assess the software quality of a poison control information system widely used in Brazil -- the DATATOX information system. Analysing the specificities of DATATOX we customized AdEQUATE, a model for evaluating the quality of telemedicine systems based on the ISO/IEC 25010 standard through the use of a questionnaire. The questionnaire has been answered by 49 end users, and the acquired data were analysed employing descriptive statistics. Overall, the DATATOX information system has been perceived as having a good quality, specifically for characteristics like effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction. Nevertheless, few characteristics have been considered of low quality, including reliability, compatibility, and age. As a complement, the work attest the feasibility on using AdEQUATE's questionnaires as an evaluation tool for software quality evaluation.