[log in to unmask],Net wrote at 14:24 on 16/10/98
about "Re: RE: MediDesk":
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>You didn't think that I would let that little comment (below) pass by,
did
>you? ;-)
It occurred to me that you might not, yes.
>Any way, I wish you well with your new system. What did you finally
choose
>to replace SM? Is this better than SM?
I chose to stop using it. The final version was irritatingly broken
anyway.
We had stopped using the reporting features a couple of years ago,
except for a couple of reports that seemed to work and were no great
trouble to rewrite in Access.
I had already moved to a narrative system using text files generated
by Word and synchronised using the Windows 95 Briefcase for the
branch surgery and for out of hours notes - not as neat as the one I
wrote in 1992 using Idealist, but adequate for the purpose, and my
visiting notes had migrated into that.
It took me several weeks to get the just ahead of time Repeat
Prescription program written the way I wanted it, using Visual Basic
because that was to hand, perhaps it would have been better in Delphi.
Acutes are still a bit flaky but then how much does that matter -
the Exeter System approach of allowing you to either pick from a
supplied or made up dictionary or just type through onto the
prescription has always seemed a sensible approach to the
defficiencies of dictionaries.
For searching and reporting I had been using the text preparation
name for over a year anyway.
Cytology and lab result details are a trivial task to store, Links
had failed catastrophically in use and is of minimal value anyway.
While we await funding for something new if the NHS feels a need for
us to have all the bells and whistles, the legacy data can sit in
its original formats, and we continue with the second copy.
For the moment I am happy with text display (the Windows function
that is most useful is the Clipboard, icons are less effective at
conveying information than words) and I have left it as ASCII, but
wrapping it with HTML is easy enough, and when XML gets sorted
out...
Better than SM, no, but better than a broken system.
--- OffRoad 1.9r registered to Adrian Midgley
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