Abstract
Healthcare information systems are characterized by having many stakeholders, roles, complex and diverse information systems, high degree of formalized working practices and an intense focus on quality concerns like interoperability, security and reliability. There is an emerging need for a structured architectural tool for supporting system developers and architects working with this kind of critical infrastructure. This paper presents MAFIIA - an architectural descrip-tion framework specialized for the health care domain. The framework has been used in the development of three very different healthcare information systems: a system for individual care plans, a platform for image-guided surgery and a patient evacuation support system. The experience from the case studies shows that the framework is a useful and flexible tool for creating an architectural de-scription, and assists in keeping the focus on selected quality concerns.
