Modernising a hospital information system

Context

The hospital ran its clinical and administrative operations on a hospital management and information system (MIS/HIS). The system had grown over time on VB6 and Delphi, and it sat at the centre of day-to-day hospital work.

Challenge

• Core functions were tightly coupled to legacy desktop technologies, which made change slow and risky.
• The system had to keep supporting hospital operations throughout the modernisation.
• The delivery process needed more structure, so that priorities, releases and quality could be managed.

What was done

Bexley’s founder was chief software architect:

• Defined a target architecture that moved the platform from its VB6 and Delphi base toward an event-driven, three-tier design separating presentation, business logic and data.
• Led the modernisation in stages, so the hospital could keep working while components changed.
• Optimised the development process, introduced a defined software development life cycle (SDLC) and rolled out Scrum.

Architecture and approach

Separating the system into tiers gave each part a clear responsibility and interface. Event-driven communication let modules react to changes without being tightly bound to one another, so components could be replaced one at a time. Process changes ran alongside the technical work, because a modern architecture needs a delivery process that can sustain it.

How this applies to your organisation

Many organisations depend on a business-critical system built on technology that is now hard to support. A staged route, with a clear target design and better delivery practice, reduces the risk of replacing it. See Architecture and Development.