The archive
Issue #021
Healthcare & Compliance 8 min read· 23 Sept 2026The Healthcare Horror
A project in a healthcare setting. I was excited. Then I found an entire medical application built on a free open-source CMS. Zero scalability. Zero encryption. Zero compliance. And a database that told me who had a colonoscopy. I declared an emergency. Then I got fired.
CTO takeaway
The lesson, minus the scar tissue.
- Never trust a 'healthcare project' without auditing the codebase first. Excitement is not due diligence.
- Patient data requires compliance. HIPAA, GDPR, local laws. If the client doesn't know what those are, run.
- Encryption is not optional. Access controls are not optional. Compliance is not optional. They're the minimum.
- When you find a catastrophic security issue, document everything. Protect yourself. You can't save everyone, but you can save yourself.
- If a client fires you for telling the truth, you were never the problem. They were.
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A comic, a story and a takeaway every other week. Written for founders who inherited a codebase they didn't choose.
