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Ask HN: Best Language/framework to Create a Medical Management Software?

2 points by noobie ↗ HN
Hey HN!

I am a beginner in programming, to improve my skills I thought I'd work on something.

My father is a doctor, I thought I'd build him a piece of software to help him manage his daily tasks (register patients, diagnosis etc).

I don't know how to begin or what technologies to use. What are your thoughts/advices? How would you do it?

6 comments

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minthd
I don't think you should do it ,certainly not as your first project. There's a huge issue of patient privacy(you're father could get in trouble if the software gets hacked, not to mention all those patients who will suffer) and for that you'll need to build highly secure software which is extremely hard and probably not possible for a beginner.
smt88
I'm going to repeat this, but more strongly: no doctor should use software created by an amateur. I would be alarmed and furious if my doctor did something like that.

Not only would that be dangerous for you and your father (due to potential lawsuits), you'd also be messing with people's lives. A leaked diagnosis could be absolutely devastating to an entire family.

Just do not do this.

akg_67
What language/framework are you learning? Use whatever you learning to solve the issues in your father's practice. That is the best way to start.

Look for opportunities where practice is doing something manually repeatedly. Try to figure out if there is a way to automate the process and perform more efficiently. Look for incremental improvement opportunities in the processes.

Pick small problems, build small solutions, demo to users in the practice, improve based on feedback, roll out quickly.

Don't try to change the process, users are already familiar with.

Small quick wins will snowball into bigger opportunities.

Don't take on more than you can handle.

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jtfairbank
I'm building medical scheduling software[1], so I have a decent amount of insight into medical process and the program needed to improve them.

Shoot me an email if you want to do a quick skype to discuss- its in my profile.

[1]: https://reschedulemed.com

LanceHaynie
First, like others have said, don't do it.

Second, I am going to assume since you were not specific you are talking about web development. There really, in my opinion, isn't a language that is better than another as far as what can be accomplished. On a very basic level you are going to be reading/writing data to a database. Every language can do this. There are some things to consider, if you don't have a Windows Server with IIS ASP is out.

For nearly 99% of the projects I create I stick with PHP and MySQL. Why? No reason other than it's what I started with. Why did I start with it? A friend of mine was already using it so I had a reasource to ask questions. Do you know any other non-begginers? If yes, figure out what language they prefer and give that one a try.

Lastly, and this is just my opinion, I would stay away from frameworks as a beginner. Once you have your sea legs so to speak, sure. At that point its about getting things off the ground as soon as you can. Right now, you should be focusing on the basics and understanding the syntax.