PHP in Healthcare

Written By Daniel Burns

As healthcare systems around the world evolve into a fully digital experience, developers in the healthcare industry look for a language and platform to focus their attention on. PHP has not been a slacker by any majority. From its easy database integration to its ever evolving speed and maturity, PHP in the healthcare industry today is a widely adopted tool and it may surprise you just how widely it is used.

    PHP has been around since the mid 90s originally created as a scripting language to interface with binaries written in the C-programming language (5). After iteration and iteration popularity has blown up to create the basis for over 80% of the active web today (1). Thats right, 8 out of every 10 websites you have visited are most likely made with PHP. A couple major sites you may know of is Facebook, WordPress, Flickr, and Wikipedia just to name a few (1). PHP is known for its ease of use and fully integrated server side scripting. Since its been around for a while and still considered modern, you’ll be hard pressed not to find any senior developers to hire who know how to program in PHP. That is not to discredit younger developers either. In the past 10 years, we have seen a market share grow from 11% to 26.2% worldwide. That is only about ~6% less than the already popular C# and ~15% less than Java at 40% of the market share. (6). This gives anyone in the industry hope that PHP as a language should stick around for at least the next 10 years. (Obviously until something way better comes along.) So why choose PHP for programming in the healthcare industry? Simply because of its high availability, adoption, and great integration with databases. Something hospitals have an ever growing number of as we approach an always connected world in 2021.

    From 2004 to 2017, hospital adoption rate of digital EHR (Electronic Health Record) systems has blown up to 96% (2)! And for good reason too. Having an EHR compared to paper records have helped save lives by having live, up to date, accurate information that can be sent from floor to floor, hospital to hospital, or anywhere that’s needed really. This amount of data created is massive and what other language to handle large amounts of data in conjunction with a database than PHP. Data needs to be entered in forms all the time, and having an always available system or webpage to import patient data is vital to the EHR system’s success and PHP is perfect for sending forms of information into a system. PHP is huge in creating web apps in healthcare. An application that can be added and accessed from any device, whether desktop, mobile, tablet etc is an amazing tool to collect and retrieve vital data, records, and insurance connections for the patient (1). The exponential impact on quality of service isn’t just for the patient, but for the healthcare workers, ie doctors, nurses, techs, is highly beneficial to them and the industries success. As a patient, being able to order prescriptions online, schedule appointments, see past visits, or view lab results instantly or as soon as they become available is amazing. Something unheard of 20 years ago! Especially in 2020 with our current COVID-19 pandemic, seeing test results as fast as possible is vital to everyone’s safety and its all mostly done with PHP! PHP isn’t just for web apps too, its a full blow programming language that enables developers to create great applications for any app store to help, for example, connect patients and doctors over video chat. Easy migration of web apps to standalone phone, tablet, and pc apps is a wonderful experience that expedites development, cuts down on costs, and reaches an even broader audience for patients. Something the industry has been trying to solve to save lives and make everyone live healthier as a result. Many EHR systems are connected to massive databases run using MySQL, SQLite, FrontBase, Oracle, IBM, OBDX and so much more, all highly compatible with PHP (1). PHP is famously web based and used for many social media platforms, so it is known to handle large amounts of simultaneous visitors at once. This is exactly what any healthcare EHR system needs to run efficiently, stay available at all times, and cater to any number of users, anywhere in the world (3).

    Development, integration, and high availability enable lots of data to be produced and stored for many many uses. Big Data comes to mind and its impact on the healthcare industry and as a whole (7). With vast amounts of data about patients, visits, location, sickness etc, trends and predictions can be produced to help us as humans understand what’s going on around us. Specifically prediction, finding when the next pandemic may hit and how to isolate it and stop it is now most likely priority number one in the industry. Enabling real time alerts based off location, patient data, and past results is already a thing today. For example, if you have an Apple Watch and lets say you fall with fall detection on or your watch tells you that you’ve been having irregular heart rates, that data can be sent to your doctor with a push of a button to diagnose you before anything major, like a heart attack, could even occur. And with all that data collected, the watch can suggest different workouts and ways to keep you in shape if it detects anomalies that can be corrected. Isn’t that amazing! PHP, if implemented correctly, is also highly secure (5). With more secure ways built right in to handle user data connecting to servers to be stored. After chatting with a few friends in the healthcare developer side of the industry, they all confirm that they have seen a push with prediction, analytics, and just broadly, the impact of Big Data information integration. All thanks to the input and systems that run using PHP. 
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    This highly customizable, expandable, and reliable platform to develop with here to stay and I can only predict its adoption will grow exponentially in the healthcare development world. PHP is widely adopted, easy to develop on, and highly secure if built right, perfect for the healthcare industry.


Follow Daniel Burns on Twitter, @DBurnsOfficial

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Resources:

1. Sharma, S. (2020, September 07). Why To Choose PHP For Healthcare Web application Development ? Retrieved December 14, 2020, from https://code.likeagirl.io/why-to-choose-php-for-healthcare-web-application-development-28ac76b017e8

2. Non-federal Acute Care Hospital Electronic Health Record Adoption. (n.d.). Retrieved December 14, 2020, from https://dashboard.healthit.gov/quickstats/pages/FIG-Hospital-EHR-Adoption.php
3. PHP for Healthcare Industry - What can be done? - PHP Development. (n.d.). Retrieved December 14, 2020, from https://sites.google.com/site/phpapplicationdevelopmentindia/php-for-healthcare-industry
4. Which is Best Programming Language For Healthcare Apps? (2020, July 06). Retrieved December 14, 2020, from https://www.enukesoftware.com/blog/which-is-best-programming-language-for-healthcare-apps.html
5. History of PHP - Manual. (n.d.). Retrieved December 14, 2020, from https://www.php.net/manual/en/history.php.php
6. Liu, S. (2020, June 11). Most used languages among software developers globally 2020. Retrieved December 14, 2020, from https://www.statista.com/statistics/793628/worldwide-developer-survey-most-used-languages/
7. Durcevic, S. (2020, October 21). 18 Examples of Big Data In Healthcare That Can Save People. Retrieved December 14, 2020, from https://www.datapine.com/blog/big-data-examples-in-healthcare/

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Follow Daniel Burns on Twitter, @DBurnsOfficial.