At the beginning of this year, the programming world received the news that Chris Lattner, the creator of Apple’s Swift programming language was leaving the company for Tesla. Three years after Apple first introduced Swift, Mr. Lattner has left the tech giant, handing over his role as the project lead to Ted Kremenek.
This move has not slowed the growing popularity of the programming language, perhaps because it comes two years after Apple made Swift open source, a development that excited many software developers. Soon after Apple introduced Swift, it quickly joined the list of the fastest growing programming languages in history. It also had become a language many developers would have wished to contribute towards its continued growth. Making it open source gave software developers this opportunity.
By design, Swift is a general-purpose language that makes it easy for developers to write safe and incredibly fast software applications. And now that it is open source, Swift is available everywhere. Swift has excited few sectors the way it has the healthcare industry. In an industry that has seen the radical potential that open source programming languages can have, Swift is transforming the healthcare sector in remarkable ways.
Open Source Programming in Healthcare IT
It is the wish of everyone who visits a medical facility to get personalized healthcare. Everyone has certain expectations that the hopes will be met when they visit the hospital, and these expectations are often very diverse from one patient to another. This is partly why many healthcare practitioners have embraced electronic healthcare including converting records of their patients into digital formats that are easily accessible every time a patient shows up at the clinic.
But with this digital shift comes challenges of handling a vast amount of data for every patient who walks through their doors. Sorting through this data can be a nightmare. And for this reason, software developers have been working on computer programs that can interpret data within each patient record and sort through an incredibly large amount of data that has been accumulated about patients over many years.
Most of these programming languages are open source which many developers believe will bring craved change to the prevailing medical landscape. It is against this backdrop that Apple made Swift open source, bringing with it opportunities and benefits in healthcare IT that many had for long wished for.
Unlike many other programming languages, Swift brings together a diverse group of developers who use a vast array of development styles. Today, the developers working on Swift come from different parts of the world and are in different industries. This has played a major role in creating a language that is built to last and easily accessible. Here are a number of notable benefits of Swift programming language in the healthcare IT industry.
An excellent security framework
Patient data is extremely sensitive and needs to be handled using the most secure IT systems. The software development language used to create healthcare applications has a direct bearing on a healthcare institution’s ability to stay safe from cyber threats, which have been targeting the healthcare industry with relentless abandon.
While the mere use of Swift cannot be said to be a security solution, the language provides a platform on which developers can deploy their efforts towards creating powerful and innovative security solutions for the healthcare sector. Additionally, Swift easily delivers better encryption of data as well as multiple security layers, offering a level of security that many healthcare practices would have, perhaps, never experienced.
Better responsiveness
One of the reasons that has got developers excited about using Swift is the development tools that it has, which simplifies coding tasks and speeds up the development cycle. Given the alarming security threats that incessantly affect the healthcare IT industry, quick development is necessary to create security solutions when fault lines emerge. The fast development cycles also help developers a great deal when responding to new regulations or dealing with emerging issues surrounding sensitive patient data.
Additionally, Swift improves the often-complex process of software and apps integration, allowing healthcare IT experts to easily add new solutions to the existing healthcare IT ecosystem. Consequently, healthcare organizations achieve better digital responsiveness, eliminating intensive development and long delays that are serious impediments to innovation in healthcare IT.
Essential role in emerging technologies
The today’s programming world, programming languages must competently embrace two evolutions in tech: The Internet of Things and cognitive computing. These two are particularly central in the direction that innovations have taken in the healthcare IT industry. Swift has already found its place in these evolving niches. In fact, it is already a central part of new technologies like wearable healthcare tech.
As the Internet of Things and cognitive computing become commonplace in the healthcare IT industry, software developers will need Swift to create a stable and secure framework that will allow them to continue innovating in this space. Essentially, Swift has become the go-to programming language for developers who want strong and secure digital solutions that are designed for what’s coming in the future.
Author: CloudSecureTech
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