fsgl wrote on Sunday, July 06, 2014:
See this section about NationNotes. I think it works for .pdf files as well.
merlinsilk wrote on Wednesday, July 09, 2014:
Thanks, fsgl for pointing me to layout based forms and NationNotes - that will be very helpful for my further deployment, but despite going through it all and building some forms, I don’t think that this is something to handle my problems at hand:
simply store some pdf files with an encounter.
It looks that Art Eaton’s changes to the ‘Documents’ form might do the trick but unfortunately his version is not on his server any more after 4 years and the form in the contrib folder is not updated.
I still played with that form and encountered a strange behavior on a windows installation: even trying to upload a jpeg file I got the error that the file type was not correct. Is it possible that xampp on windows has problems with the mime type?
fsgl wrote on Wednesday, July 09, 2014:
I’ve just attached a .jpg file to Ann Boleyn’s encounter for today in the Weekly Demo. No problem with mime type. Have been attaching drawings to encounters in the production copy for nearly 2 years.
I misspoke about attaching .pdf files to an encounter. I should have said that the .pdf has to be converted to .jpg before attaching. No problem uploading the .pdf file for Ann Boleyn but without copy/paste, it’s an attachment show stopper. Perhaps this thread & others cited within may trigger a solution.
Another germ of an idea is using the url link of the WYSIWYG editor to attach a .pdf file. Not very secure doing this way because one does not want PMI hanging out online.
fsgl wrote on Wednesday, July 09, 2014:
Still another thought:
PDFill Free PDF Tools, a bunch of utilities packed into one download, can be used to convert .pdf into .jpg and in batches. Saves fooling about in the codes.
Paper CMS 1500 forms need cropping in our office. PDFill does a nice job in that regard.
A nifty Swiss Army Knife for .pdf files.
merlinsilk wrote on Monday, July 14, 2014:
fsgl,
thanks for all those pointers!
My idea was to use pdf as the document of choice for my installation instead of going the image route - mostly because of the fact that I have multi-page documents.
So, I guess that I will look over the contributed ‘Documents’ form and get this to run properly.
One of the first things I should fix is the location where documents are stored. That old ‘Documents’ form takes some nasty shortcuts and stores the uploaded documents right smack in the middle of code, in a directory under forms/documents. It should store it with other documents that are uploaded, right?
For this I have to learn the current API for doing that - creating the path under /sites - and that info seems hard to come by.
Any idea where I can get some initial hand-holding from developers who really know the system?
fr4nkie wrote on Monday, July 14, 2014:
Another useful feature would be the ability to title the document before uploading. That way when you are printing from the Report page, you can distinguish between multiple documents uploaded to a single encounter.
fsgl wrote on Monday, July 14, 2014:
Merlin,
Start a new thread. Posting in old threads does not grab the attention as readily as a new thread. Seasoned developers, like Brady, are generous in giving their time. Please indicate the OS, version & patch of OpenEMR in the new thread.
When 4.1.2 was released .pdf printing was supposed to be available in addition to printing from .html, but it never worked from the beginning. If memory serves, Frankie was one of the first users to report this bug.
The .pdf problems, whether incorporating into encounters or printing, have never been resolved. Must be a tough row to hoe. But sheer dogged determination will get the job done. Thank you for trying.
The PDFill utility can convert multiple pages of .pdf files into .jpg. A workaround in the meantime until you get Documents to “behave”.
Frankie,
Rod has a Document Template module, which will be available in 4.1.3. It’s a souped up version of Letter in Popups. It works with OpenOffice or LibreOffice. The module will allow a user to configure a document pretty much any way he pleases. Adding a header should be simple.
The question would be the mechanism for adding clinical notes. It’s fairly easy to incorporate Demographic information, but the script at present does not provide a way to bring in clinical notes. Take a test drive in one of the Dev. Demo’s.
The PDFill utility will add a header, but I think you run Ubuntu and not Windows.
fr4nkie wrote on Monday, July 14, 2014:
Our use of the scanned notes module would be to attach reports that are generated from an outside application (Multidimensional Pain Inventory). Right now we’re just uploading the pdf file into one of the standard document folders. It works, but adds a lot of extra steps to the process of printing an extensive patient report.
If the document was uploaded to an encounter, we could just tick the document and allow it to print chronologically by date. This is why I mentioned a feature to name the file being uploaded. If I’m not mistaken, uploaded documents are labeled as “Scanned Document” on the report page. Could get confusing if multiple documents are uploaded to the same encounter and you wish to print a specific one.
fsgl wrote on Monday, July 14, 2014:
Unfortunately there is no way at present to incorporate a .pdf file and stick it in an encounter, say for today’s date. If a user wanted a Chemistry panel and the document is only available in .pdf, it is impossible to put it next to today’s SOAP. The user must scan the Chemistry panel into .jpeg and then stick it inside a NationNote where it would sit on top of the SOAP.
Any uploaded .pdf file is stranded in Documents and cannot cross the digital divide. That’s Merlin’s big task. It’s also the same problem with Rod’s new Template. One can upload the Template easily enough, but again it cannot reach the Promised Land (like Moses and Canaan).
For my Eye notes, external documents such as hand drawings and copies of Visual Fields, are absolutely required to be next to the LBV form because left in Documents/Medical Record it would become a jumbled mess in short order.
fsgl wrote on Monday, July 14, 2014:
Yet another thought,
Art Eaton has not posted for about 1 year, but he does accept messages. There is the option of inviting him to rejoin the discussion or get guidance via SourceForge pm.
Clicking on his name under the avatar will take you to his profile page. From there you can send him an email
blankev wrote on Monday, July 14, 2014:
Rod made a Document Template in which can be incorporated 13 fields that take the information from MySQL database, the patient information. It should take some programming to include more and other information.
By following the rules Rod made for the 13 options, with some trial and error you can make your own extra wishlist. I have no idea how to do this with for a Document. If sending by mail it could be done as an attachment. Copy Paste field could also be used, same goes for LBF-Visit forms. Copy Paste is an option to remember.
bradymiller wrote on Tuesday, July 15, 2014:
Hi Merlin,
Check out this code that I was working on awhile back to improved the scanned documents(i.e per encounter) form. I don’t have enough resources to finish it, but may be a good starting point for you:
https://github.com/bradymiller/openemr/commits/scanned-notes-doc-module-improve_5
(code is in the first commit)
-brady
OpenEMR
fsgl wrote on Tuesday, July 15, 2014:
Thanks, Brady.
Merlin,
If there is no response from Art, start a new thread if you encounter additional difficulties.