Brian Hipple is a software engineer with over 20 years of experience, mostly in the area of C++ and Java. He is currently a manager at a language development company.

Application size and scope

This project involved the development of the web application for an assisted living facility managing the residential, personal, medical, as well as contact and insurance information.

This project comprises of over 50 tables (and growing) and a few thousand client records which are continuously increasing as the data migration has begun.

The project

In order to be HIPAA compliant we had to:

Encrypt all sensitive data including SSN, Medicare, Medicaid, and passwords in the database

Use SSL

Restrict access with secure logins

Keep an audit log

Set timeout for browser sessions

Mask the sensitive information such as SSN, Medicare, and Medicaid numbers in the view mode (E.g. XXX-XX-9999 format was used for SSN, etc.)

PHPRunner was able to handle all of the above requirements with ease.

As multiple joins were necessary in the project I had used the custom code to update the joined tables on the edits and adds. Having to reconstruct the customer report templates like-for-like I have complimented the custom code with the Master/Detail relationships that came with PHPRunner out of the box and required only a basic configuration.

During the project I was consistently able to upgrade to the newest builds that have eliminated any issues we have encountered along the way. I have received a prompt assistance from support team for the encryption/decryption, editing and updating of the information from the joined tables, as well as the assistance for the master/detail reporting. Without a doubt, the best technical assistance I have received in my 20 years of software engineering. Every question was answered in a timely manner, many times with sample code. This reinforced my decision to go with PHPRunner for this project and for many more projects in the future.

Speaking of ROI

This project took about 10 man weeks. Without PHPRunner it would have taken at least 3X longer (30 man weeks). I would estimate that PHPRunner saved us around $7500 and will save even more in the future with new projects on the horizon.

Next steps

The main take away for me is that now I have a way to build secure PHP web-based applications. As the mobile devices market continues to grow (iPad, iPod, smart phones, etc.) it opens up a whole new software development opportunity for me. I no longer have to write the native code for each device individually but can focus on generating the web-based applications as the browser becomes the only requirement.

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