Re: [Gnumed-devel] Comments on 0.2: storing degrees of certainty ("qualifiers")

[Adrian Midgley]

>> an allergy to penicilline has been confirmed to exist, so
>> change it's status:
>>
>>  pat = gmPerson.gmCurrentPatient()
>>  emr = pat.get_emr()
>>  allergies = emr.get_allergies()
>>  for allergy in allergies:
>>    if allergy['substance'] == 'pencilline':
>>      allergy['definite'] = True
>>       allergy['narrative'] = allergy['narrative'] + '; lab-confirmed'
>>      success, data = allergy.save_payload()
>>     
I'm interested to see that there is effectively a field for each
qualifier that may be invented for each stored item and that they are
Boolean.

An alternative approach which has found favour, although Read Codes V3
for instance has barely staggered into production use a long time after
the discussion was going on, is to store a qualifier from a list.  One
can end up over-normalised, but it means a change in qualifiers is
accomplished by a change in data rather than database structure or
program code.

Degree of certainty  - not know to --> known not to/known to - seems to
be handled well by that approach. 

Both have trouble if arbitrarily large numbers of qualifiers are to be
appended to a single record, but that may be a rare occurrence.

-- 
A