Mitem Corp. is experienced in Java and Microsoft's .Net framework, but when the business software maker decided to build its newest application for the healthcare industry, it passed on both. Instead, the privately held company decided to build the application using Macromedia's Flash technology.

.Net and Java remain powerful platforms for building Internet-based software. But Mitem insists that Flash, often used for animation on web ads, was better suited for building Blue Iris, an application that lets doctors use notebooks or PCs to look up test results, prescribe drugs, check medical histories and add diagnosis and treatment information to patients' records.

Andy Nelson, director of products for the Menlo Park, Calif.-based Mitem, won't claim Macromedia's technology is a replacement for the two dominant web development platforms. However, he argues that if an application requires a rich user interface that has to run in a browser, then building it with Flash MX 2004, Macromedia's latest set of development tools, makes sense.

Mike Kelly, information services director for Alice Hyde Medical Center, agrees. The Malone, N.Y., hospital plans to roll out Blue Iris next month to about hundred users, including doctors and their staff. In the first quarter of next year, the medical center hopes to deploy the software at its four outside clinics, adding another couple of dozen users. Blue Iris is targeted at hospitals with fewer than a thousand beds.

Because of Flash's flexibility in designing interfaces, Mitem was able to duplicate the forms doctors fill out in examining patients. "Physicians are very busy, productive people who often don't have time to learn new technologies," Kelly said. "So the more we can make technology fit current methodologies, the more likely it will be successful."

Doctors, for example, use a specific form called a SOAP note, for charting each patient's progress. SOAP stands for subjective (opinion), objective (facts, such as lab tests), assessment and plan.

"Physicians immediately recognize the format of a SOAP note and know exactly where to go in reading a (patient's) chart," Kelly said. "Mitem was able to capture that SOAP note format perfectly, and reproduce it electronically on the computer screen."

Part of a SOAP note is a section for lab results, which are always displayed in standardized "fishbone diagrams," Kelly said. Again, Mitem, using Flash, was able to duplicate the diagrams. In addition, doctors could click on a section and get detailed information.

Microsoft's Visual Studio, and tools based on Java, specifically the Java 2 enterprise framework, are capable of building applications like Blue Iris. Flash MX, however, made it easier to build the custom interfaces, Nelson said.

"Java doesn't present anywhere near the (user interface) capabilities that Flash does," Nelson said. Java also requires computers to have the right version of a Java virtual machine to run the application. "That's something that typical doctors are not going to set up in their environments," Nelson said. "They just want something they can plug in and go."

Building the user interface with Microsoft ActiveX components was an option Mitem seriously considered. But the technologies' dependence on Microsoft's Internet Explorer web browser steered the software maker toward Flash.

"Our organization, as a whole, is very used to building applications in Java and (Microsoft's) Visual Basic, C and C#," Nelson said. "So for us to step away from something that we knew very well and move into this new technology was a big move for us."

Besides Flash's better tools for building custom UIs, the technology also uploads a smaller application to the browser when a doctor logs onto the server. Blue Iris's client is 450 kilobytes versus a couple of megabytes, if it was built in ActiveX, Nelson said.

Flash is built on asynchronous technology, which means that a doctor can continue typing patient information while the software is communicating with its application server to retrieve a patient's medical history, which could require aggregating data from several back end databases.

Blue Iris was built with the first version of Flash MX, which Nelson acknowledges was a challenge. The tool lacked error checking, debugging and other capabilities found in integrated development environments used by software developers.

The latest version, Flash MX 2004, fills a lot of those holes. "It's not quite nirvana buy they've made some magnificent strides," Nelson said. "(Nevertheless), it's not a very experienced IDE. It doesn't equate with something like Visual Studio, so that's still a big issue."

Blue Iris uses Macromedia's Java-based application server, JRun, to connect the client to back end databases. While other application servers could be used, JRun is the best option. "It probably wouldn't be worth (using another server) for the amount of effort you'd have to put in," Nelson said. "Those other products don't offer anything more than we currently get from JRun."

Alice Hyde Medical Center is the only hospital to license Blue Iris, although others are testing the software. Nevertheless, Mitem is considering Flash for applications in other vertical markets, such as public utilities and state government.

How much Flash is used in business software will depend on whether its capabilities are compelling enough for developers to try it. But from the customer's perspective, Kelly doesn't care whether Flash finds its way in other business applications. His only concern is that the product he uses gets the job done. "We didn't choose Flash," Kelly said. "Mitem chose Flash."