US Techlab Medical Application
U.S. Techlab Inc. (USTL) a developer of Enterprise Software Solutions targeting Hospitals in the USA and other countries.
USTL having determined a desire to outsource part of the development created a set of general software specifications that would be used as a test project, the project covered a range of skills’ including .Net, C++, C#, and SQL and more importantly several integration issues requiring creative problem solving, the project was contracted with several potential development partners in different regions of the world.
WaveAccess one of the selected developers for this trial project, assigned a team consisting of two developers and a project manager/coordinator.
The project was created rapidly within the time allotted and the budget supplied by USTL; the successful development of the test project proved to USTL the teams overall abilities productivity, knowledge and experience while also demonstrating the team’s strong work ethic and commitment to meeting deadlines while producing a quality product.
STL validated both the design concept of the project and the ability of the development team to implement it. WaveAccess was successful in being selected as the software provider for the project.
That allowed WaveAccess to go to the next step. The USTL suite of products for the Medical industry consists of several user modules accompanied by a suite of tools that can be used in the design and customization of the system, additionally USTL has designed specific hardware platforms for its suite of products. The products are used in the Ambulatory and Non-Ambulatory collection and management of “Patients’ Electronic Health Records” as a part of its hospital system. USTL provided the concept and design ideas of the system and WaveAccess created a development team with the correct skills in its project management and developers to implement it.
Initially WaveAccess established a development team consisting of a project manager, several developers, testers and a technical writer. Guidelines were established for the management and development of the project with tasks and timelines assigned. WaveAccess creates and maintains documentation for the project this has proven to significantly decrease the learning curve for new developers allowing for fast entry and almost immediate productivity to the project.
USTL and WaveAccess agreed on StarTeam as its development process tool for source control, bug tracking system and requirements management. While WaveAccess can, and has used similar project management tools, recent projects successfully used StarTeam and its usage added the necessary organization, achieving desired results and minimized project management while controlling project costs.
In addition to manual testing throughout the development WaveAccess employs a complex set of automated tests developed uniquely for each project and designed to ensure stability and functionality after each step of the development, these tests run each night logging open issues significantly decrease manual testing.
WaveAccess puts each phase of the development through a complete set of both automated and manual tests prior to its release to the USTL project managers. USTL has offices in Newport Beach, Ca and Las Vegas, Nevada both offices run on U.S. Pacific Coast time an 11 hour time difference, WaveAccess with it’s commitment to service and to ensure the highest level of daily coordination possible made available a project manager as needed during USTL designated work hours.
The required additions and enhancements to the USTL suite of products is ready for deployment, the current version is currently being installed, and WaveAccess is working on the new version with more features being developed now, a list of features implemented by now is available in the “Current projects features”.
All that made the final step possible. An integral part of the USTL solution is its ability to integrate with other systems and while USTL had a sophisticated integration engine certain HL7 integration required an additional 3rd party component. USTL had made the decision to enhance its existing integration engine by fully supporting the HL7 integration within its own product suite, simplifying the integration process and reducing 3rd party software licenses to its customers.
WaveAccess has significant experience in the area of system integration and had developed a set of integration tools for its own “in-house” use. WaveAccess after reviewing with USTL the additional integration needs of the existing system offered to supply their “in-house” development in its existing tools to the USTL integration project accelerating significantly the time to completion.
Within a month of starting this new integration project for USTL a fully integrated HL7 parser and HL7 engine was successfully processing ADT messages from a 3rd party medical vendor running on an IBM/AS400. Additional work continues on the integration engine and the pre-configuration of the system for existing hospital systems.
You can read the feedback on this project from Alistair J. Crighton, US Techlab CTO.