Re: [Gnumed-devel] patient search functionality revisited

[Horst Herb]

On Fri, 3 Jan 2003 23:56, Karsten Hilbert wrote:
> 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

Yes. If you shout their "legal" name into the waiting room, chances are they 
either don't react at all or it takes some time to realize that it is "them". 
Many use their nick name literally to exclusion.

> 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"

I prefer to type 
"ka hil"
and that should present me with only a handful of choices at maximum from 
which I select with the cursor keys in no time.


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

No problem, since names are normalized and versioned - meaning one query 
accesses all past and current names at once and sorts them by "actuality" and 
preference. That's the whole point in storing names in a separate table from 
the "identity"

Horst