Re: [Gnumed-devel] Time for a major re-think in 2005 - opinions please.

[Karsten Hilbert]

> >>I regard a working prototype (by 
> >>which I mean something which has the minimum set of essential features - 
> >>and defining that minimum set is an essential and early task in itself)
> I suppose a distinction is needed between 0.1 ("demonstration of technology")
> and 1.0 ("you can burn your Medical Director licence now")
A very concise statement. Thanks for the distinction.

> In Australia 1.0 requirements are huge (e.g. it includes billing), it will 
> take a few more years
Same here.

> Apropos of 5) Richard wrote a MIMS browser, using an old version of the
> database. AFAIK Horst has implemented this again more recently. (are you 
> able to contribute this, Horst?)
> However this development is difficult because of the highly proprietary 
> nature of MIMS,
> I am unable to participiate due to its very high licensing cost, however
> I am able to write a drug info browser for the AMH [Australian Medicines 
> Handbook] "E-CD"
> which is "open" in the sense its based on HTML and PHP, and so I can 
> understand the structure more easily.
My idea was this: there is a clear difference between
*incorporating* drug data into GnuMed (as in tying
programmatic access deeply into our code) and *interfacing* to
existing databases.

Most commercial databases come with some sort of (usually
crappy) GUI. Most of them have an interface for 3rd party apps
to "connect to" that GUI. The most simple thing for GnuMed to
fulfill "5) drug information browser" is to just let the user
programmatically jump to that GUI from convenient places. The
next step would be to deliver drugs/drug name fragments to the
drug DB GUI with the intent of having them looked up. The GUIs
I know support this. The next step would be to have that GUI
deliver back a list of selected drugs from the DB. The
interfaces I know do this. This is how prescribing works in
most cases here in Germany. Of course, direct programmatic
access to the drug data is way more desirable and will be
implemented where possible but it is not needed for 0.1.

> Remember gnumed works on 2.5 *now*, we don't need to change any code, the 
> question is when to we allow use of 2.5-only features to creep in.
As long as that does not happen I am fine with people using
2.5. Else I'd have to replace the machine I've been wedded to
the last 5 years or so.

Karsten
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