MITEM Corporation
Challenge
To create commercial off-the-shelf thin-client solution for the health care industry that integrates numerous disparate - yet life-critical - legacy applications to streamline physician interaction.
Benefits
Project Details
"Flash Remoting is critical in this application because we needed a way to communicate asynchronously between Flash Player and our back-end server. Flash Remoting allows us to conduct multiple transactions between the user and the server without blocking form interaction." Andy Nelson, Director of Products
For nearly 20 years, MITEM has been a leading provider of non-invasive legacy
integration software and e-business solutions for major corporations and government
entities. MITEM's flagship technology helps integrate disparate systems
to share critical data and automate business processes. Its core competence in
integration tools has led to hundreds of custom implementations by numerous Global
2000 companies in legacy-intensive industries such as public utilities, financial
services, manufacturing, education, and government.
However, as MITEM sought to expand its presence in the health care industry, it
recognized that hospitals and other facilities strongly preferred a commercial
off-the-shelf solution, rather than creating a custom solution using MITEM's
tools. Driving this market opportunity was the need for hospitals to integrate
disparate clinical applications and preserve the mission-critical legacy systems
that capture and track patient data and assist in managing patient care.
"Hospital systems are patient-critical, said Andy Nelson, director
of products, MITEM Corporation, and many have been in production and proven for 10-30
years. Initiatives that extend the life of these applications are attractive because
they are lower risk than replacing them. We carefully studied how physicians and
nursing staff capture and record patient data using the Subjective Objective Assessment
Plan (SOAP). We felt that if we could model our product on that plan, we'd
be successful."
The first step was prototyping the application. "We targeted the MEDITECH
MAGIC customer base,"said Nelson, "because they comprise about 25
percent of the health care market. Then we partnered with two hospitals to help
us design the application. Our prototype used HTML because we knew we wanted a
thin-client solution to front end these legacy systems. The HTML prototype functioned
well and certainly proved our concept, but the visual capabilities and functionality
were not at the level that would create efficiencies for care givers. So when
it came time to begin coding the actual product, we had to choose between Java
or Macromedia Flash MX and Macromedia JRun."
"We had used Flash on our corporate website, so I was familiar with its
strengths. Then I saw that Macromedia had incorporated Flash Remoting, forms,
controls, and other objects that programmers could work with, and that it offered
drag-and-drop interactivity. Flash also offered compatibility with a wide range
of clients - from Windows PCs and Macintoshes down to PDAs and Pocket PCs.
Ultimately, we saw that only Macromedia Flash MX could deliver the rich user experience
in a thin-client model. Flash is very fast and easy to deploy and offers the maximum
ROI and usability."
Flash Remoting and Event-Driven Model Are Ideal
With just a few programmers, the MITEM team began its development cycle. "Our
team really liked the fact that Flash uses a true event-driven model,"
said Nelson. "MITEM uses a messaging architecture that sends requests
and receives results from legacy systems. So we don't know what will hit
or when - we simply wait for events to be triggered. Flash complements
that architecture nicely."
"Flash Remoting is critical in this application because we needed a way
to communicate asynchronously between Flash Player and our back-end server.
Flash Remoting allows us to conduct multiple transactions between the user and
the server without blocking form interaction. For example, a user might initiate
a request for an update from his client - and still interact with other
portions of the application while that request processes on the back end. No
other thin client can do that."
"JRun allows us to use Flash Remoting as the communications method between
the Flash user interface and MITEM's server. In addition, we needed an
application server to serve up web pages and Flash files. Finally, the fact
that JRun integrated with our Java-based server and has cross-platform support
for other server architectures provides us with flexibility for the future."
The result of the MITEM development cycle is Blue Iris, a complete software
solution to improve the accessibility of patient and clinical data from hospital
information systems. The product's rich graphical interface enhances,
extends, and integrates hospital information systems and transforms them into
clinician-friendly applications.
Traditionally, a physician will interact with multiple legacy systems for each
patient: blood-test results from one system, CT scan results from a radiology
system, and vital sign history from yet another. That requires multiple sign-ons, sometimes even multiple terminals, creating a productivity-draining,
frustrating process. It might take 10-12 minutes simply to create progress notes
on a patient in this manner.
By contrast, Blue Iris transparently and seamlessly aggregates all of the relevant
patient information from these disparate systems and presents it in one simple,
attractive, unified application that can be securely accessed from any PC or
Macintosh (PDA and Pocket PC usage is on the way). Progress notes take only
1-2 minutes.
"For most physicians, Blue Iris can save them an average of one hour of
time in a typical day,"said Nelson. "Just as important as the time
savings, Blue Iris increases accuracy. Transcriptions of progress notes are
more accurate because 50-80 percent of the content can now come from Blue Iris.
That saves money as well. And when you have everything documented, legible,
and fast, you reduce clinical errors, reduce liability and claims, and improve
the institution's cash flow."
Anticipating Macromedia Flash MX Professional 2004
As MITEM sketches out its plans for the next release of Blue Iris, Nelson noted
that several new features of Macromedia Flash MX Professional 2004 will play
key roles. "We're very excited about the new release of Flash,"
he said. "The new error checking features will help us get feedback during
our debugging and testing more quickly. The new local-printing model should
also be a huge time saver for us. We had written some complex code to print - now we can leverage the built-in print facility across the product modules."
We're also interested in the integration with third-party source-control
and project-management because we divide our programming work among a team.
This will simplify the teamwork. We're also looking at incorporating context-based
video for the application's Help system. The ability of Flash to support
that is very valuable."
Project Summary
Macromedia products:
Macromedia Flash MX, JRun 4 (Flash Remoting)
Hardware:
Intel P4-class servers (Pentium 4, 2.4 GHz , 512 MB RAM)
Operating system:
Deployment: Microsoft Windows 2000
Development: Microsoft Windows XP
Development Team:
8 developers
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