Re: [Gnumed-devel] Re: Medication viewing

[Jim Busser]

On 2009-10-29, at 12:50 PM, Karsten Hilbert wrote:

> I see the value in a .last_actually_used field. Let's
> document that and keep it for a future revision.

Made me think of a wrinkle surrounding "when was the medication  
started" (.clin_when) ...

Suppose I provide a prescription, instructing the patient as follows:

- if the current symptoms do not improve by X days
- if in future you should develop
        - symptoms of H1N1
        - an exacerbation of COPD
        - a flare-up of gout

you should being taking
        - oseltamivir x 5 days
        - doxycycline x 5 days
        - colchicine x 3 days

So maybe in this case it is important to not forget that this  
medication despite that it is not current "at this moment" could  
easily become current at any time after the visit has ended. So I am  
thinking that maybe in this case

- clin_when could be NULL
- duration could be a definable interval

What approach to data creation is taken in GNUmed / Postgres... in  
other words, when in a widget a user would click 'New", is there:

- a row created in a Postgres table that takes on default values which  
are then displayed to the user?
- being not yet committed until after the user clicked "Save", would  
this so-called row be equivalent to a 'virtual" row?
- is it known whether the client has the ability to receive schema  
default values and refresh them based on contextually-available  
information so that without user interaction the user could already be  
presented something closer to what they need?
- if the client would default to offer 9as clin_when) the current  
datetime and the user would delete this datetime to make the field  
empty, would this result in the value being saved as NULL?