The Jury is Still Out: Blockchain in Healthcare

Zach Gardner Articles, Blockchain, Healthcare, Hyperledger, Opinion 1 Comment

Blockchain has gotten the software world buzzing about its potential applications in different business areas. With the US spending 17.9% of its GDP on healthcare in 2017 per CMS, many companies are considering how to enter into a market that has such potential for growth as well as the potential to positively affect patient’s lives.

Keyhole Software stays ahead of the curve by investigating new trends in software so that when clients come to us asking for advice we can provide an informed opinion. We do not want our clients to be guinea pigs, and we help provide guidance so that the solution they choose is the best one regardless of the trends of the day.

Blockchain is something we feel could be a good fit for the right use case, which we’ve elaborated on in our Blockchain Case Study. It is, at the end of the day, just a tool, and should only be used when it is beneficial to do so. Healthcare is an incredibly complex industry, so it is important to understand what Blockchain is, what it is not, and what needs to be considered before using the technology.

The purpose of this blog post is to think through how Blockchain can be applied to healthcare software applications. This blog post does not dive into the technical implementation of Blockchain, only its application in healthcare. A technical deep dive into Blockchain can be found in our Blockchain White Paper.

Java Development Using Visual Studio Code

Todd Horn Articles, Design, Java, Programming, Project Management Leave a Comment

Over the last few years, I have worked on several .NET and JavaScript projects. My go-to IDE for Angular, Node, and (in starting to learn) React has been Visual Studio Code, along with Visual Studio Enterprise for C#.

Recently, I started on a new team and project that was in Java. Our initial thought was to switch back over to Spring Tool Suite or IntelliJ. But, there are some really good extensions now for Java in VS Code that made that transition unnecessary. So we decided to take a look at what Visual Studio code could do for us – we were very pleasantly surprised!

In this post, I provide links and information to get you started down the right path for Java in Visual Studio Code.

JavaScript Bake-Off: Angular, React, and Vue

David Pitt Angular, Articles, JavaScript, Opinion, React, Single-Page Application, Vue.js Leave a Comment

As Keyhole consultants, we are exposed to a plethora of technology stacks and implementations from client project to client project. Particularly with our enterprise clients, great care must go into selecting the best technologies for the companyโ€™s technical needs and current landscape. After all, they donโ€™t want to be re-writing the same application in just a couple of years due to lackluster choices and shortage of developers to add functionality.

In this post, we present an open source reference application developed three times using three different frameworks, React, Vue & Angular.

Java-Based UI Frameworks

Rik Scarborough Articles, Java, Programming 1 Comment

In todayโ€™s development environment, there is an abundance of frameworks that we can choose from for front-end or user interface (UI) work.

I was recently talking with a friend about UI development. He has also been a programmer since programming was considered an arcane art (when those of us that did it were considered like Gandalf the Grey facing the Balrog). Or maybe we just saw ourselves that way. Regardless, both of us have been Java programmers for a great deal of that time.

We both lamented the fact that it was a context switch to go from coding most of our projects in Java, then needing to switch to JavaScript for the front end.

Based on conversations Iโ€™ve seen online, several readers are warming up their keyboards to chide me for complaining about having to code in JavaScript. Keep your keys cool, both of us and our co-workers are experienced in, and happy to write in, JavaScript and any of its frameworks for our clients.ย But using JavaScript isn’t always the best approach.

ย In this post, we introduce two frameworks that allow you to code your user interface in Java: GWT & Vaadin…

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Performing Technical Interviews For Consulting Clients

Clayton Neff Articles, Consulting, Opinion, Soft Skills Leave a Comment

The situation will occasionally arise when we have gained enough respect and confidence from our clients that they will ask us to help them interview new technical people to join the team. As consultants, it’s important for us to be the person that our client needs us to be at the time, so we are definitely willing to help. But, needless to say, this situation must be handled with โ€˜kid gloves.โ€™

Many managers are uncomfortable performing a technical interview in an area they do not feel competent in. Typically, that is when they will ask for your help in the interview process. As technical consultants, we should be able to provide useful feedback to them about the person’s apparent abilities. When it comes to the ‘soft skills,’ we want to ensure we’re on the same page with the client as to if we should limit the interactions to just the technical topics.

Whether you’re a consultant helping your client, or the client manager looking to fill your employee team, there are a number of topics that must be considered when searching for the right technical person.ย In this post, I will point out some useful topics to concentrate on while performing a technical interview– and why they are important questions to ask before hiring a new person to the team