Porting of CCAIR to Microsoft dot-NET one year

Porting of CCAIR to Microsoft dot-NET, one year later Contra Costa County Health Services Siu Wing Tong, Ph. D. Information Systems Division Contra Costa County Health Services, California 1

What is CCAIR? l Contra Costa Automated Immunization Registry is a centralized data repository designed to accept and consolidate all immunization history records from multiple providers l Prototype developed in 1995 Contra Costa County Health Services, California 2

What is CCAIR? , Cont’d l CA DHS (partial) funding started in January 1996 l Remaining funding picked up by County l In-kind supports l Piloted in Contra Costa Public Health in 1996 Contra Costa County Health Services, California 3

What is CCAIR? , Cont’d l Selected by CA DHS in 1999 after Human. Soft collapse for replication elsewhere in the state l Selected by Nevada State Health Division in 1999 Contra Costa County Health Services, California 4

What Happened To CCAIR? l Turned over a copy of web-enabled source code to CA DHS in 2001 – After the 2 nd IRC held in Little Rock, AK – CA DHS now maintains their CAIR version 3. x Contra Costa County Health Services, California 5

What Happened To CCAIR? , Cont’d l Contra Costa Health Services retained client/server copy of source code l Continue to operate as standalone registry Contra Costa County Health Services, California 6

dot-NET Conversion l Porting of client-server version to Microsoft dot-NET – Started in November 2001 using then beta copy of dot-NET tool – With dual front-end, browser and Windows – Dot-NET development tool was declared out of Beta in February 2002 by Microsoft Contra Costa County Health Services, California 7

dot-NET Conversion, Cont’d l Finished the first prototype before the 3 rd IRC in PA in October 2002 – Prototype presented at 3 rd IRC Contra Costa County Health Services, California 8

dot-NET Development l Continue to upgrade, intermittently, throughout the year 2003 – CA budget crisis – Need to work on other projects to respond to and prepare for the state budget crisis – Also spent time on Patient Care Information System development, of which CCAIR is now a part Contra Costa County Health Services, California 9

dot-NET Development, Cont’d l Went to user beta testing in this month of October 2003 within Contra Costa Public Health Contra Costa County Health Services, California 10

What is dot-Net? l What is dot-NET l Why dot-NET Contra Costa County Health Services, California 11

Why dot-NET? l Want web-enablement l Faster execution – Old copies, both C/S and web 3. 0 for CA, too slow – Examples l Shorter development time Contra Costa County Health Services, California 12

Why dot-NET? , Cont’d l “Code behind” – Separate into two files, one for user interface design and the other for logic code for ease of debugging Contra Costa County Health Services, California 13

Why dot-NET? , Cont’d l “No-Touch Deployment” – Piggyback onto existing web server and web browser infrastructure – Launch application with URL – Easy, centralized updates made only at web servers – Automatic download to client browser’s local cache Contra Costa County Health Services, California 14

Why dot-NET? , Cont’d l Immunization registry program new features desired – List of planned enhancements accumulated from 1999 to 2001 – Support of mobile devices – Support of alternative forms of input such as pen and voice Contra Costa County Health Services, California 15

Evaluation l Fast development l Browser Neutral l Fast execution via compiled Active Server Pages Contra Costa County Health Services, California 16

Evaluation, Cont’d l Easy development and support of mobile devices l Easy development and support of tablet PCs with pen input Contra Costa County Health Services, California 17

Development Experiences using dot-NET l Positive experience in general – Would not want to go back to the older VB 6 tools Contra Costa County Health Services, California 18

Development Experiences using dot-NET, Cont’d l Negative Experiences – Automatic conversion tool available l To convert existing, older Visual Basic 6. 0 program source code to new dot-NET version – Conversion tool not good to use l Resulting in complete and total rewrite l Visual Basic language version differences Contra Costa County Health Services, California 19

Future Plans l Port to next version of Microsoft SQL Server, codenamed “Yukon”, which supports natively any dot-NET languages so that stored procedures may be written in dot-NET languages in addition to traditional T-SQL l Port to “Longhorn” for variable sizing of characters inside screen windows Contra Costa County Health Services, California 20

Contributors l Ates Temeltas l Patrick Casilao l Shirley Sianghio l Carol Fitzgerald l Bhumil Shah l Siu Wing Tong Contra Costa County Health Services, California 21

Contact Us Siu Wing Tong, Ph. D. Information Technology Supervisor Contra Costa County Health Services 595 Center Ave, Suite 200 Martinez, CA 94553 swtong@hsd. contra-costa. ca. us Contra Costa County Health Services, California 22