First post in my new blog… a quick introduction is in order.

Expect mostly to see posts about consumer facing healthcare, healthcare technology and programming from my perspective as an experienced software engineer who is new to this industry and new to mobile app development.

I’ve been a software architect, developer, program manager… etc. for 24 years. 10 years in the banking industry, 7 in multi-unit retail and the last 7 at Microsoft as a solutions architect and platform evangelist…

It’s time to reboot.

Originally an IBM Mainframe assembler programmer back in the day, I moved to the Microsoft platform, spent some time in management at a start-up, did the AJAX thing back when Ajax was just soap, and then along came, well, SOAP and WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation). I found myself back on the Windows client – right up until Silverlight… Yikes. I need a REST (sorry.)

Rebooting for me means getting off the train (i.e. leaving Microsoft) and taking some time to stop and think about where I’m headed and where I want to invest my time and energy for the next 10 years.

Programming and technology and gadgets are a blast, but it’s not just technology that keeps me motivated. I like being a part of building software that helps solve real problems and helps make life a bit easier and happier.

When trying to decide where to invest my time and energies, healthcare and alternative energy/carbon footprint management jump out for me as 2 areas that are crying out for attention in our society. Both are obviously in the news and highly divisive topics, but I think we can all agree that our current approach in this country to managing our health and our disease and to producing and consuming energy is not sustainable.

More of the same old thinking won’t help. We, as a society, are going to have to fundamentally alter our lifestyles in order to solve these problems. In both cases, innovative technology can help facilitate the change in the way we live our lives and run our businesses that will be necessary for us to make some progress. I want to be a part of helping to solve one of these problems.

For a variety of reasons that I won’t bore you with right now   – some personal, some technology related – I have tentatively decided that I’m going to jump into the healthcare space. Specifically, I’m interested in consumer facing technology that helps people take ownership and control of their health. It’s time we all stop blaming the system and take ownership of getting and staying healthy and more effectively managing our chronic conditions and I think technology can play a big part.

From a technology standpoint, my most recent experience is with .NET and Silverlight. I’ll be voyaging into iOS with Objective-C and hopefully my posts will add some useful information for others on the same path. I hope also to be digging deep into Microsoft HealthVault and maybe Google Health.

Thanks for reading my intro post!!!