Brazil's National Health Care System

Brazil is an amazing country.  I would love to visit there some time to learn how they can be so forward thinking and progressive.  Here are some interesting statistics about Brazil and Health Care System:

• The Brazilian National Health Care System treats about 1.2 million inpatients and 100 million outpatients per month, providing everything from immunization to heart transplants.
• Complex, diverse computing systems that can effectively exchange huge amounts of patient data are a central requirement of a seamless health care system
• One of the main goals of the BNHCP was to avoid vendor lock-in or proprietary technology.  
• Two technologies -- Java technology and the XML data format -- were chosen to achieve this goal.  
• The nature of the project called for multiple vendors and system integrators to implement the system, and it was necessary to ease integration without hampering the different implementations.  
• XML, Java technology, and HTTP were used as the "glue" to bring these diverse implementations together relatively quickly.