Healthcare technology - the answer (Score 0)

The infamous MS vs Everyone Else rears it's ugly head, yes? For the sake of Making Money(TM), I suggest you put that behind you (That goes for all of you). As the (lonely, sole) architect of a multi-million doller clinical trials processing system (100M+ records, 20 million+ lives, etc), I can *promise* you that any enterprise system you build will be composed of multiple technologies. You could build it all in MS. You could build it all in J2EE. You could build it all in Perl if you're into self-flagelation. Your best bet is to develop the process flow to mirror the business model, break it into parts, and then let the needs of the application dictate the environment, at least to a certain degree. Need super solid networking between disperate clients? Java. Lot's of different data formats? HCFA? UB92? NFS? Legacy mainframe crap (I'm talking to you, Envoy/WebMD)? J2EE. Need the libraries for all those HIPAA-compliant, OIG compliant FDA compliant 'snapshot of every record in so-and-so format' stuff already written, with a company full of people to yell at when something goes south? MS has it already finished for you.

Developing and architecture is fun. To make $$, however, you may need to put your personal preferences regarding platform, environment, etc aside, and let the needs of the project dictate some of the development decisions. At least more so than usual. :)

If anyone walking the dark road of HIPAA conformal, HHS nazism type transaction handling wants to discuss off-list, mail me.

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