In a recent article on CodeGym, we talked about how large companies and growing startups are using Java, for what purposes in the business environment it is most useful, why it is important and why the business of a number of large players is inextricably linked with Java and the opportunities that gives this language. But it's not just Ubers, Netflix, and Twitter that can't live without Java. Those Java programmers who want to help people and make this world a better place will not be left without work either. Java is also actively used for these purposes, although there is not as much information published about this as about any new features of Netflix or the possibilities of applications for booking flights. Therefore, today we will touch on another area of application of Java in more detail, namely, we will talk about how this language is used by government organizations and socially significant projects around the world.
eHealth system in Austria
Austria is known for its state-of-the-art and user-friendly social security system, which includes excellent healthcare, reliable social security, and an extensive network of hospitals, doctors and pharmacies. The Austrian Social Security Act, the national insurance system, which includes 22 institutions with various types of insurance coverage and social programs, insures most Austrian citizens. And in recent years, one of the most advanced smart card and electronic medical record programs in the world has been added to this system, which works largely thanks to Java. “We chose Java because of the main advantages of this language, primarily its great versatility and flexibility among processes and hardware platforms,” said Rainer Schügerl, director of software development and security at the Austrian organization SVC, which focuses on innovation solutions in the field of telematics in healthcare and e-government. Under this system, all insured citizens receive a smart card that checks their insurance status and facilitates the creation, transfer and storage of electronic health records. The e-card system also allows citizens to use various e-health services, from preventive check-ups to disease treatment programs. Thousands of health care providers have installed dedicated equipment to scan smart cards and transfer personal data through a secure health information network that not only covers Austria, but also extends to many other European countries, as part of the European Union's NETC@RDS project. Java is the defining technology for this system. “Java is a stable, high quality programming language that meets all of our needs. For enterprise-level development that requires high availability, reliability and security, most Austrian organizations use Java,” added Rainer Schügerl. being part of the NETC@RDS project of the European Union. Java is the defining technology for this system. “Java is a stable, high quality programming language that meets all of our needs. For enterprise-level development that requires high availability, reliability and security, most Austrian organizations use Java,” added Rainer Schügerl. being part of the NETC@RDS project of the European Union. Java is the defining technology for this system. “Java is a stable, high quality programming language that meets all of our needs. For enterprise-level development that requires high availability, reliability and security, most Austrian organizations use Java,” added Rainer Schügerl.
Providing clean drinking water to Africans
A special mobile application, written in Java, collects and organizes the results of the work of the Kenyan state project Safe Water Kenya, whose task is to provide clean drinking water to rural families in remote regions of East Africa. According to the World Health Organization, more than 2 million people, 95% of whom are children, die every year from the consequences of various waterborne diseases. “In addition to harming health, this has a negative economic impact on the poor in Africa, because when they are sick they cannot work and thereby earn a living,” said Don Arnold, CEO and founder of Safe Water. Kenya (S.W.K.). To solve critical problems with clean drinking water in rural Kenya, SWK has begun installing Hydraid BioSand water filters based on sustainable sand filtration technology. “We have already installed over 2,500 water filtration systems throughout Kenya. We estimate that there are seven people in the average Kenyan family, so in just a year or so we have improved the lives of more than seventeen thousand people. This is a rather complex process. In order to report to our donors on the installation of each filter, we need to provide a lot of information: photographs, GPS coordinates and signatures of the families who received the filter,” said Don Arnold. For this purpose, a Java-based solution is used - an application called the Survey App, designed for devices based on the Android mobile operating system. This application was developed by the American company mFrontiers, which in 2014 received the Oracle Excellence Award for it - for innovation in the field of sustainable development. With this application, after installing each filter, SWK employees add information about it to the system. “Typically, they complete a questionnaire that is six to eight pages long on an Android tablet, with five or six questions on each page. Using the same tablet with the application installed on it, they can take photos of the filter and the family that received it, as well as add the coordinates of the place, because as a rule there are no exact addresses in such places,” said Daniel Pang (Daniel Pahng), head mFrontiers, who developed the Survey App in-house using the open-source JavaScript library jQuery. At the last stage, the application saves the signature of the recipient and the serial number of the water filter. Since there is usually no Internet access in remote areas of Kenya, the data obtained is stored on the Android tablet in an Oracle Berkeley DB database. When Safe Water Kenya representatives return to the organization's headquarters, the data is automatically uploaded from the tablet to the cloud database.
NASA space exploration
The American NASA agency uses Java in a number of rather interesting projects and applications. One such project is World Wind. This is an SDK with which you can scale down images of the Earth taken from satellites. With this tool, everyone can explore different parts of the surface of our planet. The data source for this model is a combination of Landsat satellite imagery and Shuttle Radar topographic mission data. NASA engineers demonstrate more than 90 exampleshow you can use this SDK. In general, Java technologies are used by NASA in a variety of projects within the space program and space exploration. “So far, Java performance has never let us down. We are really pleased with the performance of the Java applications we have developed. None of the performance issues we've encountered so far have been related to the choice of Java as the platform. Most of our difficulties are related to data transfer limits and the speed of outdated software. One of the unique requirements is that we must use accredited software. We can't just extract third-party JARs at will, but we can use whatever is already in the JDK,” said Nick Sabey, Senior Analyst and Software Developer at NASA's Robotic Compound Risk Assessment Group. By the way, NASA continues to hire Java developers quite actively.The vacancies of the American space agency for Java coders can be viewed, for example, on a special page on the Indeed website.
Virtual examination of patients by a doctor
Another system with great potential for healthcare applications, especially in developing countries, is the Online Doctor System , whose applications run on Java. This system helps doctors conduct virtual examinations and online patient consultations. The application allows the patient to fill out a special form a few seconds before the visual examination by the doctor. You can also upload test results (such as x-rays), medical history, and more. The Online Doctor System application includes a number of modules to make it easier for you to conduct a medical examination by a doctor. Patients can choose the doctors they are interested in and make an appointment with them, paying for these appointments also through the application with a bank card. According to the developers, in the future, Java technologies can also be used to create doctor applications where patients will be examined by artificial intelligence. He will issue a diagnosis and recommended treatment, based on the array of data collected about patients, as well as the test results and other information uploaded by them. Doctor robots integrated into various devices will soon be able to perform many simple procedures, such as measuring a patient's temperature, heart rate or pressure. Experts note that these technologies will significantly reduce the cost of qualified medical care, making it accessible even to the poorest segments of society.
autonomous transport
Java is also actively used in projects of “smart,” that is, autonomous, transport. In particular, Perrone Robotics has developed a range of Java-based software components for robotic vehicles. Perrone Robotics has an entire autonomous vehicle solution platform called MAX, and many of its components are written in Java. This platform is used in a wide range of applications, from automated shuttles and buses to large industrial trucks and construction equipment. According to the developers of the system, they managed to achieve such universality of their system, among other things, thanks to the use of Java. “Our system is designed to be suitable for all types of vehicles. The same application software works across a wide range of platforms and applications. We were able to achieve this because our system consists of a set of software building blocks that can be applied to the widest range of vehicles and robotics.
Summary
As we can see, Java is not only newfangled services for ordering and delivering something or social media applications. Java technologies play an important role in many really important and innovative projects that improve our lives. This is important to know for those current and future Java coders who would like not only to make good money on their skills, but also to be involved in something meaningful and useful. After all, it is often even more important than money, because a sense of purpose and one's contribution to the common good is exactly what fills our life and makes it happier.
But it's not just Ubers, Netflix, and Twitter that can't live without Java. Those Java programmers who want to help people and make this world a better place will not be left without work either. Java is also actively used for these purposes, although there is not as much information published about this as about any new features of Netflix or the possibilities of applications for booking flights. Therefore, today we will touch on another area of application of Java in more detail, namely, we will talk about how this language is used by government organizations and socially significant projects around the world.
“We chose Java because of the main advantages of this language, primarily its great versatility and flexibility among processes and hardware platforms,” said Rainer Schügerl, director of software development and security at the Austrian organization SVC, which focuses on innovation solutions in the field of telematics in healthcare and e-government. Under this system, all insured citizens receive a smart card that checks their insurance status and facilitates the creation, transfer and storage of electronic health records. The e-card system also allows citizens to use various e-health services, from preventive check-ups to disease treatment programs. Thousands of health care providers have installed dedicated equipment to scan smart cards and transfer personal data through a secure health information network that not only covers Austria, but also extends to many other European countries, as part of the European Union's NETC@RDS project. Java is the defining technology for this system. “Java is a stable, high quality programming language that meets all of our needs. For enterprise-level development that requires high availability, reliability and security, most Austrian organizations use Java,” added Rainer Schügerl. being part of the NETC@RDS project of the European Union. Java is the defining technology for this system. “Java is a stable, high quality programming language that meets all of our needs. For enterprise-level development that requires high availability, reliability and security, most Austrian organizations use Java,” added Rainer Schügerl. being part of the NETC@RDS project of the European Union. Java is the defining technology for this system. “Java is a stable, high quality programming language that meets all of our needs. For enterprise-level development that requires high availability, reliability and security, most Austrian organizations use Java,” added Rainer Schügerl.
To solve critical problems with clean drinking water in rural Kenya, SWK has begun installing Hydraid BioSand water filters based on sustainable sand filtration technology. “We have already installed over 2,500 water filtration systems throughout Kenya. We estimate that there are seven people in the average Kenyan family, so in just a year or so we have improved the lives of more than seventeen thousand people. This is a rather complex process. In order to report to our donors on the installation of each filter, we need to provide a lot of information: photographs, GPS coordinates and signatures of the families who received the filter,” said Don Arnold. For this purpose, a Java-based solution is used - an application called the Survey App, designed for devices based on the Android mobile operating system. This application was developed by the American company mFrontiers, which in 2014 received the Oracle Excellence Award for it - for innovation in the field of sustainable development. With this application, after installing each filter, SWK employees add information about it to the system. “Typically, they complete a questionnaire that is six to eight pages long on an Android tablet, with five or six questions on each page. Using the same tablet with the application installed on it, they can take photos of the filter and the family that received it, as well as add the coordinates of the place, because as a rule there are no exact addresses in such places,” said Daniel Pang (Daniel Pahng), head mFrontiers, who developed the Survey App in-house using the open-source JavaScript library jQuery. At the last stage, the application saves the signature of the recipient and the serial number of the water filter. Since there is usually no Internet access in remote areas of Kenya, the data obtained is stored on the Android tablet in an Oracle Berkeley DB database. When Safe Water Kenya representatives return to the organization's headquarters, the data is automatically uploaded from the tablet to the cloud database.
The data source for this model is a combination of Landsat satellite imagery and Shuttle Radar topographic mission data. NASA engineers demonstrate more than 90 exampleshow you can use this SDK. In general, Java technologies are used by NASA in a variety of projects within the space program and space exploration. “So far, Java performance has never let us down. We are really pleased with the performance of the Java applications we have developed. None of the performance issues we've encountered so far have been related to the choice of Java as the platform. Most of our difficulties are related to data transfer limits and the speed of outdated software. One of the unique requirements is that we must use accredited software. We can't just extract third-party JARs at will, but we can use whatever is already in the JDK,” said Nick Sabey, Senior Analyst and Software Developer at NASA's Robotic Compound Risk Assessment Group. By the way, NASA continues to hire Java developers quite actively.The vacancies of the American space agency for Java coders can be viewed, for example, on a special page on the Indeed website.
This system helps doctors conduct virtual examinations and online patient consultations. The application allows the patient to fill out a special form a few seconds before the visual examination by the doctor. You can also upload test results (such as x-rays), medical history, and more. The Online Doctor System application includes a number of modules to make it easier for you to conduct a medical examination by a doctor. Patients can choose the doctors they are interested in and make an appointment with them, paying for these appointments also through the application with a bank card. According to the developers, in the future, Java technologies can also be used to create doctor applications where patients will be examined by artificial intelligence. He will issue a diagnosis and recommended treatment, based on the array of data collected about patients, as well as the test results and other information uploaded by them. Doctor robots integrated into various devices will soon be able to perform many simple procedures, such as measuring a patient's temperature, heart rate or pressure. Experts note that these technologies will significantly reduce the cost of qualified medical care, making it accessible even to the poorest segments of society.
Perrone Robotics has an entire autonomous vehicle solution platform called MAX, and many of its components are written in Java. This platform is used in a wide range of applications, from automated shuttles and buses to large industrial trucks and construction equipment. According to the developers of the system, they managed to achieve such universality of their system, among other things, thanks to the use of Java. “Our system is designed to be suitable for all types of vehicles. The same application software works across a wide range of platforms and applications. We were able to achieve this because our system consists of a set of software building blocks that can be applied to the widest range of vehicles and robotics. 
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