Data Flow Diagram for patient information system for a hospital

Question

I have an example for a DFD for a patient information system implemented in a certain hospital. The below figure, represents the overview diagram (level 0-diagram, if we consider that the first level is the context diagram then the second level is level 0 diagram and so on):

In this system, patients can search and make appointments. I try to understand the data flow that is labeled patient name and that is directed from the process Make appointment to the database Patients (see yellow hightligh in the diagram).

I don't understand why we have this flow in our system: In which scenario would the process Make appointment send to the database patients the patient name ? Shouldn't the patient name already be sent by the process maintain patient info?

Answer 1

You seem to be mislead by the name of the process Maintain patient info, which suggests that patient records are created there.

If we forget about the assumption and look at the flows involving the Patients data store, we can see:

• Patient Info flows out to Make Appointement and Prepare Reports
• Patient Info flows in from Maintain Patient Info. But the flow is in labeled Update to .... This is more restrictive than just an inflow of patient data: it supposes that the data already exists.
• Patient name flows in from Make appointment.

Using DFD semantics and assuming the DFD was drawn respecting the rules, we can understand that:

• When a patient makes an appointment, the patient name may be stored in the data store. This means that new patients are only created when appointments are made, and they are created without any other info.
• Patient info is managed with maintenance process (but not when making an appointment).
• New patients are uniquely identified by their name.
• Probably patient name is a part of patient info (since it is never extracted explicitly).

Remarks:

• A DFD data store is "passive": data that flows in is stored, and data may be extracted from the store. Any other reaction to an inflow than storing, requires a process. So this name flow shall in now way be misunderstood as a query.
• Patient name would not be sufficient in the real world to reliably identify patients in view of potential homonyms.
• It is also strange that Perform billing does not need patient info.