Re: [Gnumed-devel] gmDrugs

[Hilmar Berger]

On Fri, 4 Oct 2002, Ian Haywood wrote:

> I have had a quick look at the design. It certainty looks cleaner than
> before. I would like one feature to be inherited from the old design::
> class-level properites, which are 'inherited' by drugs.
I'm not quite sure if this will work. Although your design is definitely
much more beautiful than having to repeat all information for every single
drug, there are some problems I see. First, data on drugs used by a
physician have always medico-legal implication, that is, you have to be
sure that the information you get is the one that was accepted by the
authorities to apply to the specific drug. That is usually the information
supplied by the manufacturer, which can differ for drugs containing the
same active substance (because of adjuvants or whatever more).  

Second, it could be difficult to translate available drug databases to the
hierarchic class design. The process of adaption would probably mean
changes of the supplied information, which in turn means that you can't
rely any more on the fact that the drug information is the one supplied by
the manufacturer. That bears legal dangers, IMHO.

I would suggest to keep the drug database design at first as it is and try
to actually port AMIS/MIMS/WHatsOever to our design and learn what
problems arise and what is actually feasible.

Hilmar