Re: [Gnumed-devel] patient search functionality revisited

[Karsten Hilbert]

> It would also be good to support nicknames, as some people (Australians in 
> particular)
> are notorious for using them to exclusion.
Same in Thailand. Are you saying nickname use is so prominent
in Australia that Australian docs will want to be able to type
the nickname to pull up the record at the time the patient
comes in ? Remember, I am not trying to build the ultimate
find-any-patient widget. I am trying to deal with the common
situation, e.g. when a patient presents to the front desk. I
want to be able to type

"Karsten Hilbert"
"HIlbert, karsten"
"karsten, hilbert"
"kars, hilb"
"hilb; karsten, 23.10.74"

and always come up with a reasonable list of suggestions with
myself on top. This will catch 99% of the cases. We commonly
have the following problems:

1) name changes
   - marriage
   - old last name not found in database

2) People with German ancestry from the Ukraine
   - difficult to get precise and _consistent_ spelling
   - their German is often limited, especially in
     pronounciation
   - social security slips are often handwritten and therefore
     unreadable
   - social security slips are re-used among several people

3) Vietnamese People
   - those (and the Mozambiquans) were the Turk Gastarbeiter
     of East Germany
   - last and first name are often switched around, even on
     the health insurance card

4) Umlauts
   - insurance companies nearly randomly spell people's names
     with regards to Umlauts
   - Müller will often be Mueller

Obviously, there's different ways to construct a name: Thai
people have many parts to choose from, it depends on the
sitution, there's no clear concept of a first name, their
"firstest" name is probably the nickname; Germans write "first
last", Japanese "last first". Therefore query generation and
order is language dependant.

This is what I want to handle.

Karsten
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