Healthcare information systems and e-health services supplier, IBA Health is working on a project to improve its software engineering processes to offer improved patient care and reduced costs.

IBA Health is implementing a range of Rational Software's tools and methodologies it hopes will improve the requirements and configuration management stages of the software development lifecycle and derive more product scalability, as well as, higher quality and lower costs.

Andrew Morgan, software process manager at IBA, said the company has undergone significant change and expansion over the last two years, spanning over six countries.

"From an IT perspective, we know that the only way to increase quality of output while reducing cost is through educating our people, promoting team work and unity, considering tool support for all aspects of the software development process and believing that one of the best ways to fire up productivity is through a review of the processes employed," he said.

IBA Health is measuring its software engineering process improvements on the Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI).

It was developed by the Software Engineering Institute and specifically addresses an organisation's process maturity.

According to the institute, CMMI places proven practices into a structure that helps companies assess its organisational maturity and process capability, establish priorities for improvement, and guide the implementation of these improvements.

Rational is working with IBA Health to help the company achieve CMMI Level 3.

According to Rational, this will mean the company has the process and supporting tools in place to develop more proficient people, appropriate risk management, an established framework for project process definition and treats processes as a persistent, evolving asset of an organisation.

As part of this initiative, IBA Health will be implementing several tools from Rational Software including Rational Unified Process, Rational ClearCase, Rational ClearQuest and Rational RequisitePro.

Rational Software is currently working with a number of other companies in Australia who are implementing capability improvement programs within the framework of CMM or CMMI, these include Motorola and EDS Australia.