Graph the USER world with GD and YOU

OpenEMR Development
1

blankev wrote on Wednesday, May 27, 2009:

Dear members of the Developers world,

now the Growth charts are available as a new development in the OpenEMR world of plotting we are in need of some new challenge…

While ACO and List and Layout (under Administration menu) are getting some serious reconstruction I would ask you to take into consideration a side development where "any code used" could be plotted against a chart.

Yes of course it is possible, but the answer "is it feasible in OpenEMR" might give rise to new discussions.

With the growth chart in place, to summon it up as "some dots on a graphic" (this is not meant to be offensive for the Developer because it was a great piece of work), we have the opportunity to make plotting for an outbreak of Flu/AH1N1 virus (or Mexican Flu to make it International) in the region for the Clinic possible, of course common flu or AH1N1 had to be coded during encounters. Blood pressure curves,  Weight, BMI in community, graph of  difference in cultures, languages etc. For many of my proposed graphs there is some kind of statistics in the lists under REPORTS and these give a good insight.

But for most of us … "a picture tells more than thousand words" … counts.

On the Internet we can get so many charts in the right format. We can code almost every piece of Medical work in the field, these combinations could be of great advantage if implemented as an open system to be filled by USER with the right permissions:

Permisson to load CHART and give this chart the right name.
Permission to use CODE and knowledge of how to put the right mark on the right spot on the chart.

Most of the research to get the right chart for the right code keeps the providers of a OpenEMR complete system alert and in the field for many new implementation opportunities.

Pimm

2

cfapress wrote on Wednesday, May 27, 2009:

Hi Pimm,

Adding graph functionality isn’t too hard. In fact, it’s easily kept separated by making them available through the encounter-forms. In the case of the growth chart the user can only pull up the chart when looking at the Vitals form.

But I think your question is getting more broad and reaches into reporting features. The example you give about flu outbreaks means that a report has to look at all patients with a specific characteristic, such as an encounter visit for flu-like symptoms. I think such a report could be created and should be a plug-in much like the encounter forms can be plugged in via the Admin interface.

Perhaps you can offer a very specific example of something to be plotted and a developer here could take a shot and creating a report?

Jason

3

markleeds wrote on Thursday, May 28, 2009:

Jason,

You bring up a good point.  I think the idea of plug-in forms needs to go beyond just encounters.  I think there should be three types of plug-in forms:

1) with encounter and pid (we already have these)
2) with pid only (patient specific)
3) no encounter and no pid (general reports)

I have dealt with this so far by making certain encounter forms have an ‘external mode’ where they are given a setting in the url like ‘http://openemr/interface/forms/myform/new.php?mode=external’.  Then the form knows to act appropriately.  Rather than cluttering the main program with links, I often just add bookmarks in my browser.

Mark