Does anybody using growth/bmi charts?

Management and Administration
1

bo2999 wrote on Tuesday, May 12, 2009:

I am working with pediatric population and wondering if there is a function in openemr to allow for plotting/displaying growth/BMI charts? Anyboby is using it now?

2

blankev wrote on Tuesday, May 12, 2009:

Developers, find this growth graphic program for FREE.

http://www.growthanalyser.org/index.php?id=109

Could this be integrated in OpenEMR so that demographics of OEMR are used in Growth-analyzer?

Soon to be released version 4.

(BTW,  I don’t remember if I needed to register with the promise not to use this program for general usage.)

Pimm

3

blankev wrote on Tuesday, May 12, 2009:

Developers, find this growth graphic program for FREE.

http://www.growthanalyser.org/index.php?id=109

Could this be integrated in OpenEMR so that demographics of OEMR are used in Growth-analyzer?

Soon to be released version 4.

(BTW,  I don’t remember if I needed to register with the promise not to use this program for general usage.)

Pimm

4

cfapress wrote on Tuesday, May 12, 2009:

Our Agency has requested that growth charts be included in OpenEMR. I started to investigate the choices and came upon a few free options. I didn’t get very far with the development before I was pulled off in another direction. I’d like to come back and revisit the growth chart feature.

I figure it would be tied to the current ‘vitals’ form since that is where height, weight, etc are gathered.

Here is one free choice to try and integrate. As I recall it required PHP5 but could be made to run with PHP4 with some hand editing.

Jason

5

bo2999 wrote on Tuesday, May 12, 2009:

My brother just came up with a solution using GD in PHP.  By using, GD he converts growth chart downloaded from CDC to png format and plot the points directly to the chart. He sent me a simple file for plotting and it works as I wanted. But since he is out of town, I have to wait for him come back to help me finish this. 

Thanks,

6

cfapress wrote on Wednesday, May 13, 2009:

The CDC provides some great reference info including the raw data to build a the percentile curves with any graphing tool. I prefer this method over an overlay on a graphic image. But the graphic chart is really nice because it looks like what a physician expects to see. Not some computer generated graph.

For those not following. Here is the US CDC web site for growth charts
http://www.cdc.gov/GrowthCharts

My only concern is that this is for the US. What about other countries. Do they use growth charts too?

Do you think you’ll have something to demonstrate in the next few weeks?

Here are a few ideas, perhaps already conceived, to enhance the charts:
- Put the patient’s name in the blank at the top of the form
- Optionally plot historical data and connect with a line-graph
- Use the black and white CDC chart and make the plot points colored and distinctly shaped (squares?)
- Enter historical data in the table in corner of the CDC form

Jason

7

gutiersa wrote on Wednesday, May 13, 2009:

there could be an options in the vitals form to turn off or on growth charts in case of practices that do not use them, even in the US.

8

bo2999 wrote on Wednesday, May 13, 2009:

The solution for plotting with GD enabled in PHP is extremely simple, only a few line of codes.   One can plot on any graph if you can calculate pixels!  So international user can just change the graph of their choice and calculate pixel, done!. If you want, I can send you the sample file for illustration when I get home tonight.

Bo,

9

cfapress wrote on Thursday, May 14, 2009:

Hi Bo,

That sounds great! Here are a few questions to ponder as we move forward with developing this tool:

What size paper are you scaling to?
Does a printed version look clean?
What about on-screen?
Is it coming through as PDF of a JPG or something else?
Often the browser will resize the image to fit the window. How does this affect the look of the growth chart?

Jason

10

bo2999 wrote on Friday, May 15, 2009:

I have the sample zip file for demonstration.  I can sent it to you to see if it fits your needs.  The best way to view is in Openemr Xampp web server, because it has GD library installed. Otherwise, make sure GD is installed with PHP.

The png file is 1000 x 1294 pixels which will fit in the 1024 X 768 screen in web browser.  Basically, what you see is the chart with dots.

There should be no connecting lines, because the CDC charts already have lines for normal curves.

If the dots lie outside of the curves then child might have a problem.

Of course, I am not a programmer.  So, gathering all the data to plot the chart is where my problem starts : - ((

Bo,

11

cfapress wrote on Friday, May 15, 2009:

Hi Bo,

That looks really good. Do you want to keep working on it? If you’d like help, I can take and incorporate this into the ‘vitals’ form and then we can review it.

Jason

12

bo2999 wrote on Friday, May 15, 2009:

If you could, please, by all means, incorporate into the ‘vitals’ form. 
I would appreciate it a lot.   
I will be working on the BMI charts, and head circumference pixels counting :slight_smile:

Thanks,

Bo,    

13

sethlang wrote on Saturday, May 16, 2009:

May I also have a copy of the demo sample file?

Thanks

14

bo2999 wrote on Saturday, May 16, 2009:

Already sent.  Check your mail box.

Bo,

15

blankev wrote on Saturday, May 16, 2009:

Please give me some advise ov the following:

I imported the Growth-chart-.php directory in XAMPP but are stuck with a black page.

the path is:

…\xampp\php-growth-charts\ and now I tried to start in FireFox but chart.php and example.php don’t give any results.

I would like to see if the difference (between my option Growth Charts as mentioned above in this FORUM path and see if the CDC option) gives rise and creates graphs with much difference.

Pimm

16

bo2999 wrote on Saturday, May 16, 2009:

I suppose that you have the zip file.  Unzip the file to \xampp\htdocs.  It is where the web browser is supposed to be.  Make sure to start xampp and apache.  Please refer to oemr.org for more instructions on how to run Xampp.  Point your browser to:

http://localhost/chart.php

it should give you the chart form.

Bo

17

sethlang wrote on Sunday, May 17, 2009:

Bo,

I tested this in Debian Linux it works well (I just had to install php5-gd and restart apache for it to work).

I e-mailed a modified version of chart.php that works now using Date of Birth and then loads the appropriate chart (Birth to 36 months, or 2 to 20 yr old based on patient’s age calculated from Date of Birth - if the patient is less than 37 months old it will load Birth to 36 month, otherwise it will load 2 to 20 yr).

Also, for the 2 to 20 yr chart, this modified version calculates and charts the age as a float by comparing Date of Birth to current date(otherwise for the Birth to 36 week chart it calculates age in months).

18

bo2999 wrote on Sunday, May 17, 2009:

Oop! I meant to say "Is anybody using growth/BMI charts?"

19

blankev wrote on Sunday, May 17, 2009:

If relevant for my patient I do use different charts also the Growth - BMI chart I sometimes also like to compare differetn charts together.

Overall chart to compare with Mexican or Norwegian growth charts of mother is from one region and father is from another region with accepted differences in growth or stature. I these cases only the median curve and 90 percentile curves are different, but enough to give the provider an idea of how the patient thrives.

Pimm

20

cfapress wrote on Tuesday, May 19, 2009:

Hi Bo,

On Friday I’ll revise the vitals-form to include the growth chart code you’ve provided.

Do you see any benefit to plot multiple points on the graph to show a patient’s progression?

Jason