Re: [Gnumed-devel] pharm information as XML

[Karsten Hilbert]

Horst,

let me explain once more in detail what we need in Germany:

There is a company IFAP that sells a widely used drug database.
This database is sold in binary form and they also provide
frontends for DOS and Windows. Strictly speaking there is no
way to get at the data other than using their proprietary,
provided frontends. IOW there is no programmatically useful API
*at the data level*.

The frontends, however, do have an API of sorts. It basically
amounts to:

GnuMed: "IFAP, the user wants to select some drugs"

- IFAP frontend starts
- let's the user select some drugs
- writes those drugs to a file when the user finishes

GnuMed: "hey, there's a file, looks like the user finished
         selecting some drugs"

This "protocol" is available with most drug databases here. The
amount of information in that file differs. Some just provide
a list of selected entries while others seem to offer the
selected entries split up into fields (generic, brand,
strength, ...).

Now, is it possible to support this kind of interaction hidden
behind a drugref API adapter ?

Karsten
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