Re: [Gnumed-devel] 1.4 Features

[Busser, Jim]

On 2013-04-10, at 2:20 AM, Karsten Hilbert <address@hidden> wrote:

> On Mon, Apr 08, 2013 at 09:10:49PM -0300, Rogerio Luz wrote:
> 
>> PRESCRIPTION CAPABILITY !!!
> 
> Which parts thereof are lacking/missing for you ?
> 
> There's easy parts and there's hard parts.
> 
> And there's easy parts which depend on the hard parts.

GNUmed can list current medications, and from the current medication 
information it can be possible to print a selection of these (the one or more 
desired to be prescribed).

What GNUmed lacks anywhere in the medication tables to store any 
prescription-related information that is not part of the current medication 
information. This could include

- how many pills or how many days supply to provide (although maybe could be 
programmatically informed if the current medication contains a future stop date)

- for those countries where it is possible to specify how often a supply can be 
refilled (e.g. 2 months x 3 maximum 12 months approval except for oral 
contraceptives which can be pre-approved for 2 years), this "refill" information

- eligibility for the medication to be "covered" under certain financial plans

Therefore the user would have to hand-write this information, in ink, on a 
printed PDF page and then scan it, or create and open an editable 
word-processed document, add this extra information, and save the document 
which can maybe be saved in GNUmed. Even in this case, it may remain necessary 
as a last step to print and sign the prescription. But this can be ok because 
at least in Canada there is no requirement to keep a photocopy of the signed 
prescription. A copy of the document (without inked signature) can still be 
useful to record into the GNUmed patient record as an attached document.

FreeDiams can do the following:

1) it can receive information from GNUmed and allow the user to add information 
needed for the prescription and can then return back to GNUmed the document 
that is generated.

2) it can provide drug interaction information if the clinician is able to read 
English, French, German and I believe Spanish

however the medication lists in GNUmed need to have ATC or need to be 
separately loaded into FreeDiams and there is also a small charge to obtain the 
drug interaction information to load into FreeDiams. (FD is open source but 
still the developers ask a small charge to provide the information to help 
their project).

-- Jim