The Prescription Dialogue


The code browser is a dialog / notebook page that allows to browse and search medical coding systems. All diagnoses should be encoded to allow later data mining. Thus, a comfortable coding tool is essential.

At present, we are using only the freely available ICD-9 and ICD-10 coding systems. Other coding systems can simply be plugged in if the end user has a valid license for them.

Query entry widget

The topmost left control is a combo box text entry widget. It stretches dynamically, depending on the screen width. Input is buffered in this combo box, and at the end of the session the history buffer is stored in a table on the postgres backend, and reloaded at the next session of that particular user.

Code system list box

Next to the query entry widget, the code system list box lets you select the coding system of your choice. Immediately after login, the client will pull a list of available coding systems and store them in this list widget.

Buttons

  1. find text:

    performs a full text search in the "text" attribute of the selected code database. The query used is
    "select code, text, id from %s where (text like '%s%' or text like '%s%');"
    The first string substitution is obviously the table name. The second and third substitution is the search text, once starting with a lowercase letter, and once starting with an uppercase letter. This is nmuch faster than using the regular expressions built in in PostgreSQL. Capitalized (all uppercase) databases are recognized and only an uppercase(search text) search will be performed.

  2. find code:

    Similar to "find text", only that the querty text will be taken verbatim (no capitalization), and the query expects the code field to begin with the "code" search expression. The query used is
    "select code, text, id from %s where (code like 's%')";

  3. SQL:

    This button is for the "power user". It allows you to enter any SQL statement as long as the result will be text, text, integer. It is designed to allow for greater flexibility when working with coding systems. If you want to run free SQL queries, you better use the SQL Window (third last tab in the notebook sequence)

  4. Clear list:

    After hitting any of the buttons "find" or "SQL", search results from previous queries results from previous queries are preserved and new results simply appended to the list. WIth the "clear" button, the list can be reset to an empty list.

  5. Select / deselect all:

    Obviously, with thesebuttons one can either select or deselect all presented list items.

  6. -> active Problems / -> past medical history

    the list allows multiple selections. By clicking one of these buttons, all selected items are transferred to the respective list widgets. The "date" will be the current date. This can be conveniently edited by double clicking the date field in the two history list widgets.

The main code list widget

Query results are displayed here sequentially. Multiple queries are allowed, results will only be dicarded when clicking on the "clear list" button or when logging out. Left clicking selects an item. Multiple selections are allowed. Common conventions (like shift-click) to select a range ot items work as expected. Double clicking an item will transfer it into the "active problems" without further ado. Right clicking will present a pop-up menu with options.


TO DO: