On 5 Aug 1998 21:33:50 +0100, [log in to unmask] (Adrian Midgley)
wrote:
>http://www.swis.net/health/mir/midgley/hubris22.htm
>
>Summary
>A medical record complete with audit trail could be constructed
>using (as a thought experiment) Word for Windows with embedded Excel
>spreadsheets, which would work as well as most databased solutions,
>and be transportable when the patient moved.
Have you ever tried to manage a word for windows document, with embedded
excel spreadsheets? It would be a horrible format for a system to access,
as well as being terribly slow.
If you're suggesting one file per patient, why not use something sensible
like XML? Easy to parse, although systems would no doubt need seperate
index files in (whatever) format, but these could be generated from the raw
XML files depending on the software used.
Remember also that Office 99 (or 2000?) will have HTML as a primary file
format, which might impact this. Using Microsoft binary file formats _for
portability reasons_ is silly as they change with great regularlity.
Security might be an issue, if you would want patient data on your hard disk
to be encrypted to prevent casual access using "notepad" or similar.
Best wishes
James
--
Adastra Software Ltd, Edmonton House, Park Farm Close, Folkestone, Kent
Tel: 01303 222700 Fax: 01303 222701 24-hr support: 0701 0702 016
Specialists in call handling for GP Co-operatives www.adastra.co.uk
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|