General question: Oracle vs. "hand-written" database

Hello,

I am the medical director for a palliative care program which is searching for a database that will handle about 1000 new patients per year, and be accessible over a network and over the internet so that those of us on call can pull up patient info and make entries.

I am by no means a computer expert. I have put together a "temporary" database in Access on a stand-alone PC so that we can keep track of basic demographics, and produce reports regarding length of stay etc.

Access is apparently not compliant with our province's privacy legislation, as it does not provide for detailed tracking of who made changes to what data at what time etc. I have been told that Oracle is compliant with these requirements, and I have been following this newsgroup to gain some understanding of its potential. I thought that we would be soon hiring a developer to put together an Oracle database for us.

However, one of the quotes that we have relates to a database written in Basic, which on the surface seems to meet our needs.

My question is:

Is it conceivable that something written from the "ground-up" could compare with a database application built on a foundation such as Oracle? (This is where my naïveté no doubt shows). My (possibly invalid) assumption would be that while one may be able to write from scratch the means to store data, that the power of data retrieval, data integrity assurance, security/privacy, multiple simultaneous users, etc would be more reliable from an established product such as Oracle.

My apologies if this is too general a question for this group; I didn't know quite where to ask it, and I value the opinions of those that participate here.

Thank you,

Sincerely,

           Mike Harlos

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Mike Harlos MD, CCFP        Email: mike_at_harlos.net
Medical Director, Palliative Care Sub Program,
Winnipeg Regional Health Authority
Medical Director, St. Boniface Hospital Palliative Care
Rm.A8024, 409 Tache Ave, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada  R2H 2A6
Ph:1-204-235-3929 Pager:1-204-932-6231 Fax:1-204-237-9162 
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