Best language to develop medical software

Question

I need to write medical program to manage medical practices (patient records, appointments, prescription, etc). Note that this is not for US practices so US EMRs will not work. What is the best platform to develop the software in ie. language and database?

Considerations include:
- Integration with the web - will need to have Doctors download updates to the software from the web. Will also post reports from the software unto webpages
- The software will include a mobile application - probably for Blackberry
- Cost is a big factor - need to minimize the license cost to the users
- Need tight security on the program

Answer 1

Java. It's free (although the developers do not work for free), it can expose data to the web through web service or RMI.

Answer 2

There is no one right answer for this.

You can pretty much use any modern language and popular database system to build medical software. It really depends on:

• Requirements
• Budget
• Getting good programmers/designers

You can base your software on:

• C# with SQL server
• Java with Oracle
• PHP with MySql
• C with flat files

All of these are options.

Answer 3

Also java has some pretty good mobile support with the J2ME-platform.

The security aspects are really good especially in web development but this can get quite complicated with bigger applications (Hi @ J2EE-Interfaces).

Answer 4

Silverlight could be used both in and out of the browser.

I read that silverlight support is also coming on the blackberry so you might want to take a look at it.

No license cost is required for the users.

Answer 5

I recommend the. Net platform for the sheer fact only Microsoft can properly render word docs.

Answer 6

The fact it's medical seems irrelevant here. You want a very standard application, probably with a web interface.

So use Java web stack or ASP.net or PHP depending on personal preference and on what developers you have. You could also use Ruby on Rails.

Answer 7

No offence, but if you need to ask a question like this you are not the right person to be making that decision.

However, assuming this is not a homework assignment then a real life system is going to be complex and is going to have very changeable requirements, just look at the number of failed (in relation to original cost to actual cost) software projects in this area.

Your first issue is architecture not programming language, choosing the right one should allow you to actually implement a solution with whatever language makes sense for a given component. I'd suggest investigating web services, you can then implement teh services in java/.net/etc, you client in say c++ on blackberry, or obj-c on iphone, html/ajax in a browser.