For the past two months, I have been working on a lab integration. The integration is going well but in our conversation today. I was informed that the results layout design is not optimal for a doctor. It looks like an IT person designed it and not a doctor. I have attached what the results look like and what the optimum results that come back from the lab company looks like so that there is a comparison.
I know that MD and Rod worked very hard on this system to bring it to the community.
As always, improvements abound.
Does the system have a built in acknowledgement for the sending of the order?
Our layout was changed to fit smaller screens and more in line with printed reports provided by other labs. With minor changes to standard layout we have been using this regrouping of same basic information.
Since project mixes data and presentation without any framework, it has become increasingly harder to contribute alternatives without significant rework and retesting effort.
The current results layout, like most of what I do, was heavily influenced by input from my clients (doctors). It’s a little over 600 lines of code, so not a big deal to adapt to other formats.
It would be nice to create a PHP object model for the data, here and elsewhere in OpenEMR. During initial development, which often explores different approaches, it’s not always clear what that model should look like. Thus there is always room for improvement, and those who make improvements are encouraged to complete the cycle by feeding them back to the project. I love it when others build on what I have done.
I agree with you in the sharing back. When this project tapers off, I will share back some of the modification I had to make to get this lab integration to pass testing.
We have used it since day 1 for our users. Unfortunately as noted earlier, it is difficult to allow both formats to coexist. If you can break the standard code apart into data layer (sql data fetched into php arrays) and presentation layer (html table ready to be injected with data), then we can have a global option that lets user choose a layout with the possibility that someone comes up with a radically improved layout in future.
In this project I had to develop a printed label for the specimen jar. I have attached a sample. Would this be useful to the project? It prints to a dymo 450 label writer.