Re: [Gnumed-devel] Time for a major re-think in 2005 - opinions please.

[Hilmar Berger]

On Thu, 6 Jan 2005 07:57:32 +0100
Karsten Hilbert <address@hidden> wrote:

> My idea was this: there is a clear difference between
> *incorporating* drug data into GnuMed (as in tying
> programmatic access deeply into our code) and *interfacing* to
> existing databases.
I feel that interfacing to a large number of proprietary APIs might be more 
difficult than implementing a direct access to some basic drug database. 
Drugref or some rudimentary form of curated substance list might be sufficient 
for the beginning. 
In the end, access to any type of drug information source should be 
transparent, i.e. there should be some sort of drivers for remote/local 
databases and commercial apps and a common middleware/GUI that adapts to the 
capabilities of the backend. That's the basic idea of the drug browser that is 
already existing in the Gnumed and has basic functionality with the german AMIS 
database. All it needs to connect other backends is to write drivers for them 
(and overhaul the design a bit). 

Hilmar