My objective in this email is to list what I encounter in GNUMed 1.3.6 so that we have a description which I can later correct if there are misunderstandings, and put it on the wiki.
We can also determine the feasibility of any improvements.
Currently, when a patient and the Measurement plugin are in focus, clicking the Add button prompts user input.
1) first in the tab order is the Test name … here a single letter is enough to activate the word-match phrasewheel. Test names (types) which I have previously entered, when selected, appear as
foo (your own practice @ your own practice)
which assigns many characters to the test org and IMO distracts from the primary item of interest (the test type) so maybe later we can visit alternative representation of this information.
2) I have the impression that this "Add" widget has been coded so as to assume measurements that originated in the praxis, such as Weight or Blood pressure. For some patients, the number of measurements that originate outside the praxis (say, via path
lab) will exceed the weights, blood pressures and pulse rates measured in praxis and until methods are developed to efficiently import into GNUmed the external data it seems to be clinicians may like the patient measurement widget to anticipate that user-inputted
data can easily have originated from
in praxis
or
externally
3) The tooltip for the Test field says "The type of test or measurement this result is about." which does not inform me whether I can, via my input, create a new test or whether I can only select from among existing tests. Therefore I shall try to create
a new one, "urinary protein dip" and we can see my confusion when I reach the "Units".
To me, this kind of test result is a "state" and can be only positive, negative or indeterminate. I am not sure how "Units" apply.
It seems to me that these Units should be allowed to be "null". I considered to have us accept a fake unit such as "n/a" except this then becomes confusing. See screenshots "Urinary dip tool tip". Shown in screenshot 1 is
Conversion unit: n/a/
Most recent result:
203-07-08 negative n/a
and it would have been similarly confusing to see the alternative unit "nil"
Result: negative nil
So IMO we either need to relax the constraint on the table (so as to allow a null for the units, maybe based on an associated column such as has_units) or else some way for the value to be a space and/or a value which is not displayed in the GUI?
-- Jim