Today Healthcare is one of the hottest areas for Technology innovation. It is globally a $6B opportunity based on startup funding trends, which is a lot, but there is also a $3 Trillion industry to transform!
Delphi has a particularly strong presence in Healthcare. There are many, many Healthcare systems that are written in Delphi that service literally million of patients and thousands of providers. From primary care EHRs, Dental Software, all kinds of Radiology Suites, the lists goes on, and this is true across the globe. We have multiple existing integrations with some of the largest EHR systems in the World (Mumps integration anyone?).
I believe that there is substantial opportunity to leverage Delphi for Cross-Platform apps in Healthcare. It is an opportunity that is drastically underleveraged. Today, there are very few frameworks that can address this need as well as FireMonkey (FMX) with Delphi. Windows has been a great platform for this with very good security and performance that are critical for healthcare apps. Building HTML5 applications is relatively fast, but disconnected performance is particularly important in Healthcare and security can be stronger with native applications that provide far more encryption options.
The biggest opportunity is for highly functional purpose built applications. Traditional EHRs are very complicated, as they cover many use cases and huge ranges of functionality. However, provider’s time is particularly valuable. Building apps that make providers function more efficiently is super important. Optimizing patient flow to reduce waste is similarly important. These apps do not need to do everything, they need to do some things well. Some of you have probably noticed how providers drag these huge workstations around to type their notes… tablets are lighter, but few UX’s hit the mark. Plenty of room for innovation.
The following example is a nice conceptual view of a Doctor’s office registration application. The use case is super simple, yet think of the last times you’ve been in a doctor’s office and you have see things like this. I have been in some of the largest medical institutions in New York, and guess what – paper everywhere. The only place with an app was an Orthopedist that was charging $500 for a finger splinter that costs $5 at the pharmacy and the insurance covered it, but that is a separate story. Let's build some great apps!