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Comprehensive Portal for Real-time Medical Information
Client Requirement
Client demanded a website that collaborates with the whole medical industry. The website was conceived to span various sections related to the healthcare industry such as latest medical equipments, diseases, nutrition, hospitals, drugs, etc. Client expected the site to be a comprehensive, single-point platform providing an insight into the entire medical sector.
Client desired a community portal that offers personalized experience and enables information exchange. Through this platform, users can also provide real time ratings helping other users be familiar with the kind of services a hospital or a device manufacturing company offers. Owning to its huge structure, the website is neatly integrated for user-friendly and cohere experience.
Client also expected the following:
- Scalable and reliable database technology
- Impeccable database performance, offering alerts on millions of adverse event reports
- Better algorithms for manual cleaning and logical linking of various data sets
- Latest graphical representation technology for better visualization and reporting
- Advanced security features
- Development of several features such as rating system, importing reports, and so on
- Better categorical divisions
- Advanced search features
- Community networking features
- Printing options and filters, wherever necessary
- Dashboards summarizing the information
Challenges
According to the requirement, client demanded high-ranking search techniques to be implemented in the application. Apache Solar, which is a competent technology, is used to meet user requirement. The application can now search according to various sections such as search according to tags, geographical focus, category based, related disciplines and so on.
We included automated meta-tagging feature in this website. Also cross-linking and creating extended core taxonomy fields came as a challenge.
As the website includes the community networking features, Drupal framework was used to ease the task of creating social login.
Other challenges include addition of quality graphical representation at any and every place in the website, and importing data by CSV for all content type.
Technologies Used
| Drupal 6.22 | Most appropriately suited to create dynamic web pages. Drupal is a free software package that allows anyone to easily publish, manage and organize a wide variety of content on a website. |
| Solr Server | Solr is the popular, blazing fast open source enterprise search platform from the Apache Lucene project. Its major features include powerful full-text search, hit highlighting, faceted search, dynamic clustering, database integration, rich document (e.g., Word, PDF) handling, and geospatial search. |
| JavaScript and AJAX | (Client-side Language) Cross browser support & faster loading time with light web pages that require no plug-in downloads. Scalable JavaScript based controls to provide flexibility and enhance user experience and involvement. |
| My SQL | A versatile low maintenance database management system which acts as a cross-platform compatible database component of the LAMP platform. |
| Linux | Linux is a sturdy platform with open source code for extensive customization and with powerful multitasking abilities. |
| Apache 2.0 Handler | Apache handlers can either be built into the server or included in a module. Supports a variety of features while offering extendable core functionality. |
Manpower
| Project Leader | 1 |
| Developers | 1 |
| Designers | 1 |
Planning
The enormous structure of the website and the challenges involved necessitated the adoption of a four-tier approach that consisted of:
- MySQL Server Database, Tables, stored procedures etc... incorporated within the database layer
- Conversion of data between incompatible type systems in databases and accessing data from the database for the Interface layer and Database Abstraction layer respectively
- All the business logic procedures for modules such as User Profiles, Invitations, Forums and Blogs etc... forming the Business Logic Layer
- The GUI of the website formed by the User Interface layer
Architecture
The website was mainly characterized by rich user data and featured extensive capabilities of social networking nature, which entailed MySQL Server and Drupal. The development structure was specifically implemented to facilitate the 'faster to market' transition of such concepts. Drupal Framework was used to develop modules like User Profiles, Invitations, Forums and Blogs other modules such that direct execution from the UI layer was possible. Effective access to the database in an object oriented context was implemented using an interface translating the object logic to relational logic so as to communicate with the relational databases in an object-oriented manner. Access to the database was enabled through the creation of an intermediary abstraction layer. Scrum methodology was used to manage risk and to make effective changes. Due to its higher productivity and lower costs, scrum lets us create a flexible agile process.
Development Highlights
Greater accuracy in handling user status, user information and other user-related validations ensure privacy and security of content. Comprehensive search & browse options are offered within optimized query features using Apache Solar. The entire framework was kept highly scalable in order to provide adaptability & ease while incorporating new features. Web usability guidelines were strictly adhered to during the development and the interface was easily navigable through the judicious use of CSS and HTML controls. Search Engine Optimization activities were regularly resorted to with a view to ensuring high visibility for the site over the internet. The site was developed and fully functional within a span of 8 months.
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