MCC.NET - Development and Product Maintenance

 Company: MEIERHOFER AG, Munich (www.meierhofer.de) 2006-2011
Software Engineering for an Electronic Patient Record

Context

At MEIERHOFER AG, I worked for more than six years in a permanent position—mainly as a developer.

Since July 2011, I have been working as a freelance developer.

During my initial time at MEIERHOFER, I was responsible for maintaining an acquired HIS (Hospital Information System) from GE Healthcare. After about a year, I transitioned into the product development of the core product MCC, which is based on .NET technology.

My scope of work was always broad and varied.

Since 2008, I have been developing using Scrum.

Tasks

  • Integration of third-party systems based on generic interfaces:
    • Archive systems
    • Dictation systems
    • PACS systems
    See details here
  • Development of various applications
    • Requirements module
    • Functional workplace, which was later expanded into an RIS (Radiological Information System)

Roles

  • Requirements Engineering
  • System design
  • Implementation based on .NET (C#)
  • Establishing and maintaining contacts with development teams of integration partners
  • Interim product management on a technical level

TopoControl

 2006
A control configurable via XML. The use case: A ward view beyond grid controls and lists...

Figure: Basic structure of the TopoControl

 

Context

Nursing staff in a hospital work closely with patients and expect a high degree of visualization from a ward overview.

Therefore, a frequently requested feature from many customers was a hospital ward view beyond grid controls and lists.

Various concepts were discussed. WPF was not yet truly available, so we decided to develop a component.

The solution consists of a graphical base component (derived from WinControls), which can be configured using a not-too-complex XML mapping and integrated into any application. In addition to vertical and horizontal flow layouts, TopoControl also features a vector layout.

Initially used in the ward overview, TopoControl was later employed in various other applications such as a graphical outpatient module and for visualizing lab requests. TopoControl is easy to integrate and has a very small footprint.

 

Tasks

  • Specification, design, and implementation of the TopoControl
  • Integration into the MCC.NET HIS system
  • Usage of the control for a graphical ward workplace
Figure: TopoControl in "Vector Layout" mode

 

Key Features

  • Configurable on an XML basis
  • Mapping between DataTable and TopoControl
  • Various layouts (auto-layout vertical and horizontal, vector-XY layout)
  • Recursive object structures, therefore
    • arbitrarily deep grouping
    • sortable
    • filterable
  • Custom images for every value of each data cell

 

Development Tools

  • C# with Visual Studio 2003/2005
  • NUnit
  • ReSharper
  • VSS

Figure: XML configuration of some values

MCC.NET Development of a Clinical Requirements Module

Development of the requirements module

Communication with functional units (FAP)

Context

In clinical practice, orders for examinations, therapies, lab results, and radiological orders are sent to the respective functional unit via requirements.

This was the first part of a larger project, during which the functional unit software (FAP) was also expanded into an RIS.

 

Tasks

  • Business and system use cases for requirements management
  • System use cases for order management and processing
  • Coordination with product management
  • Implementation of the application
  • Migration of legacy data from the VB6 implementation
  • Integration of various MCC modules
  • Appointment management
  • Documentation events

 

 

MCC.NET Development and Maintenance of an FAP/RIS
Development of a configurable FAP (Functional Workplace) / RIS (Radiological Information System)

Context

Using an FAP (Functional Workplace), many clinical workflows can be modeled. The goal of this engaging task was to reimplement the existing solution (Visual Basic) based on .NET (C# - VS 2010) while taking into account existing customer systems.

 

Tasks

  • Business and system use cases for requirements management
  • System use cases for order management and processing
  • Implementation of the application
  • Integration of various MCC modules
    • Document management
    • Reporting
    • Medical documentation
    • Performance recording
    • Archive connection
    • Medication
    • Appointment management
    • Care planning