[Gnumed-devel] simple question about timestamps

[Karsten Hilbert]

Hi folks,

is there any need for being able to display source timestamps
for data, eg what was the time when it was entered into
GnuMed at the site it was entered ?

For an example:

Sebastian in Thailand enters a vaccination he has been given
there. His local time was 10pm. PostgreSQL will convert that to
GMT and store it. When he retrieves the data he will see the
time as 22:00. However, when I retrieve this data here in
Germany I will see that he was given the shot at 4pm *my* local
time. Mind you, this is the exact same moment in time. However,
there is no way to retrieve the local time at *his* location
(unless I know his location and calculate it).

Now, it may not make a difference for the vaccination.
Imagine, however, things like cortisol levels. There certainly
is a difference whether blood samples where drawn at 7am (what
I am seeing) or 1pm (what he was seeing and which was the
actual local time of sampling).

So, do we need to store the source timezone for our timestamps ?

Karsten
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