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Developing for Healthcare - .NET vs J2EE?

Posted by Cliff on from the which-technology-would-you-use dept.

An anonymous reader asks: "Our small southern shop (an eleven man team) is about to commence development on some medical software geared for physician's offices and hospitals. Since we have never developed in this area before (our primary source of income comes from developing software for regional transportation offices of the government) we are at loss for the reigning technologies. The two technologies we are considering are J2EE and .NET. What are the opinions of the Slashdot crowd? Surely others have developed for the monstrous healthcare industry. Thanks!" "My senior manager recommended using .NET. His argument is that most desktops he has seen in hospitals already run Windows, the development time will be cut down for this small to mid-size project, rich desktop clients are possible and there will be no application server costs involved. He also contends that .NET has more templates and abilities than J2EE (which is simply 'web targeted' in his opinion.

Half of my coworkers are with him and the other half have suggested using J2EE due to portability--we do not want to cut off any potential sources of income with an already dwindling future. Has GNU/Linux become widespread in the healthcare industry that we should consider developing for it too? What about Mac OS X server?

The last problem we have is winning over the IT staff hearts. They are the ones who ultimately give the go ahead to purchase the software. Java gets a bad rap for being slow, while Microsoft (and by extension) .NET has the shadow of being insecure. How can you possibly win?"

3 of 645 comments (clear)

  1. Think of Security by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Any program written for the medical industry that involves capturing patient data is required to be secure. Read up on HIPPA (http://cms.gov/regulations/hipaa/cms0003-5/0049f- econ-ofr-2-12-03.pdf) before making a decision. The company I work for creates software for the medical industry and we chose J2EE for the security and relatively low barrier to entry using open source application servers and tools.

  2. Been there, done that by christian+simpleman · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Last summer we developed a case management system from scratch for hospital admissions pre-qualifications and tracking. Our client serves the medical insurance industry, therefore HIPPA was a factor. We used LAMP all the way, finished the project in three weeks (no brag, just focus and swinging elbows), and they have fifteen nurses banging away 24/7, client access via https, and 100% uptime. All of their money went to us instead of software licensing, they paid less anyhow, and they are smiling ear to ear.

    If the PHP is not elegant enough, for the love of sanity please use Java. If we don't feed the monster that is choking, screwing, and robbing us, it may weaken and we can get on with an unshackled future. We do the entire world a favor whenever we choose sane engineering.

    "If no one tilts at windmills, the damn things will take over the world!"- Christian Simpleman

    --
    "If no one tilts at windmills, the damn things will take over the world!"- christian simpleman
  3. Java by the+eric+conspiracy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The company I work for is in the process of porting all of it's VB (.Net predecessor) software over to Java. The reasons are pretty interesting.

    - Microsoft essentially obsoleted our entire company's code base when they introduced .Net, forcing a rewrite that will cost millions. Microsoft is infamous for churning its technology base, so they could easily do it again. Fool us once, we aren't going there again.

    - Java has been around for 10 years, with many fewer technology upheavals.

    - Java is multiplatform, much more so than .Net (Mono is not even close to be considered - one patent infringement lawsuit from MS and it is gome). Java gives us access to just about any platform we are likely to need to deploy to.

    - Scalability. .Net is famous for crappy performance on more than 2 cpus. Java runs great on big iron.

    - App servers - With MS there is one choice. With Java there are many vendors, with a vast range of product capabilities.

    - Development tools - Just as good, wider variety and often far less expensive per seat.

    - Maturity - best practices are fully understood, while .Net's use cases are not.