Design of a Medical Software Platform for Periodontitis Data Collection and Clinical Workflow Support

This thesis addresses the design of a Medical Software Platform to support Periodontitis Data Collection and Clinical Workflow. It originated through a collaboration with the University of Turin Dental School, whose doctors required a centralized system to gather information to be used in a periodontal disease study. Currently, their information is dispersed: periodontal charts are stored on local files, radiographs are stored on clinic PCs, photos on private devices, and questionnaires on external devices. This inefficiency in centralization hinderers work progression, causes mistakes, and imposes difficulty in creating homogeneous research datasets. Out of this necessity originated the concept of a centralized platform. To better understand the problem, I observed the doctors during a real visit, following closely the workflow they have in place. These activities were then represented through process modeling, using diagrams to capture and formalize the steps of care in a way that reflects real practice. This provided a clear picture of how the system should support daily work. From these processes modeled, requirements elicitation defined what the system needed to accomplish and captured needs like usability. The requirements were then further defined using requirements modeling in the form of use cases, activity diagrams, interfaces and models of entities This allowed both clinical detail and technical structure to be clearly defined. The result is a design of a platform to bring all these elements together in one space. It digitalizes the periodontal chart, brings radiographs, photos, and questionnaires to a centralized space, and reduces data entry by doctors and students. Simultaneously, it creates standardized and reusable data to be used in research. The project is concluded at a design level and has no in-operation prototype yet. Future work could include building and verifying the system with clinicians, refining the interface through feedback, implementing it within hospital infrastructure, and ensuring overall data security and protection before real-world use.