I am a doctoral candidate in health information systems. My areas of expertise are in systems analysis, implementation, and social/behavioral/organizational and performance issues with the use of IT.

My passion is clinical decision support and expert systems design, and I'd like to do more work in this area. I have used apps/shells like Corvid for expert system design, but I'd like to develop my skills on the programming side. My question is this: 1. For the design of knowledge-based clinical applications like those noted above, what programming language should I focus on as a primary target for my extracurricular studies? I have some experience with VB.NET. Thank you for sharing your time and expertise.