One project I've been working on
recently involves the following:
- .NET application that listens to a legacy hospital
system spitting out lab results
- SQLXML templates that enable extracting and
updating a database of patients and results using a common XML
format
- .NET Windows Application that hosts a Flash
ActiveX object
- Flash movie that displays Patients, Lab Results
and Test Results
The Flash app was the main area I worked on, to
achieve my results I had to create my own classes, and extend some internal
classes. I create an Event Broadcaster, a base Collection, a Debug/Trace object,
and did some custom extensions to the internal XML/XMLNode objects to add
minimal XPath support.
The end result with the initial prototype is that new
Patients are added to an onscreen list (allowing for animation which will be
added shortly), updates to Patients are handled (next iteration will add
highlighting as a visual cue that an update has occurred), new Lab Results are
added to the correct Patient, animating in (moving all existing results to the
right) to provide a visual cue of the change.
It currently supports some simple scrolling, we'll be
adding some smoother scrolling soon.
So, what's the end result of this? Doctors and Nurses
in a Cardiac ward (and later other wards) will be able to see instant updates of
Lab Results for Patients in an intuitive interface that is accessed using a
touch-screen.
The users will not need any technical skill with
computers, there's even a possibility of adding proximity detection (with the
use of special cards Doctors can wear around their necks) that will allow a
doctor to filter the list to just his/her Patients with a single
click.
I think this application shows a good use of XML, Web
Services, .NET (C#) and Flash MX to create an easy and intuitive solution to a
real-world problem.
What do you think?