Design goals are
The patient photo: if available, the most recent photograph of the patient will be displayed. Clicking on the photograph will open the patient details notebook page below. A right click will reveal a menu allowing to browse other photographs of this patient.
Personal details: The most important items from the personal details of the patient. Configurable.
Allergies & Warnings Configurable. Colour coding etc. available to discretely display warnings like "drug seeking behaviour"
The following three list control elements (Recalls, current medication, important items from the medical history) are examples only. It should be completely user configurable as to which information to display in these three data display elements that stay always on top
The main notebook : The notebook design has been chosen in order to avoid annoying popup dialogues. The order of the notebook pages is user configurable. The first page of the notebook is the login screen. As most user settings are stored on the database backend, the gnumed client will not be functional before the backend connection has happened.
GNUMeds design allow connection to arbitrary servers. The server of choice is simply entered into the "host" text entry field. This is handy to connect to a replicated backup server in case of a failure of the primary server. It also allows to replicate the database onto the workstation and work separated from the net. As we are using TCP/IP (with optional SSL/TL secure protocol layers, the server can be located anywhere in the world. This allows for example a doctor to access a visiting patient's health record without importing / exporting data first. It also allows for centralized record keeping in practices with multiple locations, or it allows a doctor to access his records from home.
After entering the password and hitting enter (or after clicking onto the login button), the client attempts a server backend connection. If successful, the connection is logged and the notebook unlocked. The users preferences are loaded and the client configured accordingly. This can involve a complete reconfiguration of the client user interface. As the client remembers the last state before it was closed the last time, no configuration will be neccessary (unless it ionvolves confidenbtial settings) if always the same user uses this particular workstation.
After a succesful login (and succesful user configuration) the first page of the notebook is opened automatically and the cursor is placed inthe "patient selector" search expression combo box, ready to search for a specific patient.