Re: [Gnumed-devel] Re: Info re way data retrieved - 3

[Karsten Hilbert]

Richard,

> > > Surely it would be better to pull in
> > > a whole lot of stuff at once, rather than in such a piecemeal way.
> > If you make more substantial suggestions I might be able to
> > understand the value of pulling in more data when searching for
> > a patient's name.
> 
> Why is this useful - I often find myself on the phone to someone, say a 
> specialist asking them to see the patient. They usual say "give me his 
> contact phone number and I'll get my secretary to give him a ring'. This 
> alone happens to me multiple times in a week/day. Also having card numbers 
> handy such as medicare etc, when something has changed when on the phone to 
> our pharmaceutical benefits.
Ah, a use case ! Now, I am easily swayed by that ;-)
Actually, two use cases.

1) quick access to possibly multiple instances of
   demographics data
2) easy editing of demographic data

There's a few things to notice here IMHO:

- we are talking about *editing* demographics, not *entering*
  anew: for editing a "nice" layout of the information such
  as in gmDemographics is useful

- the intent seems to be to have access to demographic data
  without necessarily incurring a full "patient change" cycle
  within the client but also not forcing the user to use
  another client for that ...

I would draw the following conclusions:

- for *editing/viewing* demographics gmDemographics fits the
  bill once it works as intended (not so for *entering* new
  patients, I content)

- we should consider making gmDemographics operate on a list
  of gmPatient.cPerson instead of gmPatient.gmCurrentPatient
  (just like a waiting list plugin would)

- another option would be to have a separate horst space
  plugin handling quick access to several demographics objects
  and not changing the active patient - however, that feels
  clumsy and non-integrated

Does this analysis bode well with you ?

Thanks $DEITY there aren't that many patients coming in
off-hours currently :-)

Karsten
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