Automatic entry of information into table?

[Gary]

I am very new to Access and trying to decide even if Access is right for my
project. One of the things that I'm trying to accomplish is to keep track
of various records which have been sent to me for storage. Many of these
records are patient records and I'd like to keep track of and be able to
search on the patient name, ID number, and date of birth for each record.
However, I want to only have to manually enter (via barcode scan) the
patient ID number and not the name and DOB. I have a txt file (updated
regularly) which lists the name, ID, and DOB of all the patients that have
been seen in all the clinics. Can anybody tell me if/how I can have Access
automatically populate a table with the name and DOB if I enter the ID#.
TIA! Very much!!

Gary Vocks

 

[Rick B]

You don't. Access is a relational database. That means that you store
related data in a separate table and build a relationship.

In answer to your question, I think Access is an excelent tool to do what
you are asking.

In your example, you would have at least two tables, probably 5 or more.

TblPatient
PatientID
PatientFirstName
PatientLastName
PatientDOB
PatientGender
Patient Address1
PatientAddress2
PatientCity
PatInactiveY/N
etc.


TblVisits
VisitDate
VisitTime
PatientID
DoctorID
etc.

TblDoctors
DoctorID
DoctorFirstName
DoctorLastName
DoctorSpecialty
DocInactiveY/N
Etc.


In the above example, you store the patient ID in the visits table, but that
is all. You don't store the related details from the patient table. If you
did, and the patient got married or divorced, you'd have a ton of records to
update. In a normalized relational database, you don't store repeating data
in your detail table.

For more information, do a google search on "relational database
normalization".

Good Luck,

 

[Gary]

Rick, thanks for your reply. I understand what you're saying and I
understand a bit about relational database. What I'm trying to do in this
case, however, is simply keep track of the physical location of
paper/microfilm records, not the information pertaining to the patient. All
that information is kept track of by the "clinical information system."

As a little background, this is part of a larger "records management" system
that will keep track of many different types of records (including records
not related to our medical practices) and information about them.
Everything from required retention periods to storage locations is included.
I designed the system almost 20 years ago and it was written in "Nomad" for
a mainframe. The system works pretty good but as things are being moved off
the mainframe I'm wanting to redo the system into something that we can
handle locally. I've got tables designed that I think will do the job that
I'm asking. Now I'm primarily trying to save some data entry labor either
by somehow incorporating the txt file or automatically extracting
information from it.

I'd appreciate any other help that you can give me. Thanks, again.

Gary

 

[Rick B]

I'm not sure how any of those facts change the underlying question. You
should still have two related tables. Based on your response, you might
only have a couple of fields in the tables.

If you want to "automatically" enter data, you could make the field a
combo-box with autocomplete and it would allow you to pick the name from a
list of previously entered data. You could also use some kind of lookup to
pull the data from another table and populate your table. But, I would
still recommend against this. If you are "wanting to redo the system" I
would personally redo it to work in a normalized relational database
structure.

Maybe someone else will jump in with some suggestions.

 

[Gary]

Rick! Thank you very much, again! Actually the "lookup" function was what
I had in mind but your comments make me rethink my plan. Thanks, again!

Gary