[Gnumed-devel] Gnumed early usability? (was: Lab data support in OSCAR)

[Jim Busser]

On May 6, 2004, at 2:46 AM, Karsten Hilbert wrote:
> Jim,
>
> thanks for your probing into OSCAR. Here is what we [GNUMed] support
> (and to various levels of completeness already do):

Circumstances have required that I see patients at more than one 
location and matters have gotten to the point that for me, paper 
results handling will no longer work safely / reliably without an 
excessive time drain.

I have contacted some local IT people (the same couple of fellows who 
installed and support OSCAR for a local clinic) to determine some 
server and support requirements which, at this stage, are partly 
generic. If people are interested, I can post some of their suggestions 
about hardware, accessibility and other planning considerations.

I will prefer to use GNUMed as I think it's been designed more 
carefully, and I have been unable to penetrate "OSCAR-think"... they 
seem to not offer / support the same type of dialog as we have at 
GNUMed. My conundrum remains the uncertain timeline for GNUMed.

Option one would be for me to set up OSCAR, and to use it purely for 
the receipt of electronic lab results, until such time as GNUMed is 
more ready for use. I could then freeze and lookup in OSCAR historical 
data, or I suppose I could archive the data downloads and re-import 
them into GNUMed once it is ready.

Option two would be to use GNUMed, but ONLY if:
- its table design, and widgets by which to create and find patients / 
match results / view / print patient data, are quite doable in the next 
3-6 months
- its table design is stable, and/or we create and maintain a reliable 
path (update scripts) by which to update any real clinical data into 
any table modification(s)

As I do *very much* need to put in place a personal solution, I would 
be willing to finance some help in needed additional code and/or 
locally relevant modules, The trick would be to identify people who, 
with their code, would be  'compatible' with GNUMed. I am not sure how 
it would work... I could serve as the intermediary, but of course they 
will have technical questions beyond my ability, and of course Karsten, 
Ian, Carlo and other key (but recently lower profile) GNUMedders would 
need to be able to bless, perhaps help integrate, whatever is being 
added, Do we think a positive scenario can be fashioned out of this?