Surreal Notions

This database was originally an Access 97 database written by a member of the medical staff at Offutt’s hospital.  It was used internally by a dozen or so people at the hospital.  Then upper management saw it and decided they wanted to leverage it against the entire base… and so I was given the project with an initial release planned mere days later.

The user base was going to increase by about 100 fold.  Not to mention additional functionality required and a generally poor baseline.  To top everything off, I needed to make it HIPAA compliant.  Needless to say, this was an interesting challenge.

After a mad dash to break the application into two components and rewrite each component, I managed to get a working copy up and running before the base-wide readiness inspection.  This application was specifically noted by both management and examination teams as key during the inspection.  Eventually, I designed an improved version that used a full DBMS and web interface; developed more effective reports for differing levels of management and need; and increased security and compliance.