Questionnaire - dilemma.

[Anthony Hodges]

Hi all, (very sorry for the cross-posting, but it's late and I am exhausted)

I have been granted the honour of converting our Hospital
discharge/admission forms from a paper based system over to an EDP system.
It will be entered in via a tablet PC's that the nurses/doctors will be
issued. At this stage we will be merely trialing a system and we will be
using MS Access 2k as the plaform for data entry. Now the
admission/discharge form consists of well over 255 fields. So clearly we
can't take the lazy way out and add it all in the one table. )

Constructing the table such that it is normalised is not a problem. Any sod
can work that out and in fact ms have an article on how to do such a thing
(Q209493). The problem is in the presentation of the data. They want to
have the EDP version of the admission/discharge form printed out on A3
double sided and taking almost exactly the same appearance as the existing
stationery. A simple subform style report (sorry forgot the technical term,
it is 11pm at the moment) won't cut it, because the fields on the stationery
are all over the place.

So I guess I am just after some advice... Is the best way of reporting my
normalised questionnaire through unbound fields that are populated via code?
Do you recommend I just get lazy and split the tables into parts bound with
a 1-1 relationship, lol?

Thanks in advance,

AH.

 

[Tim Ferguson]

So I guess I am just after some advice... Is the best way of reporting
my normalised questionnaire through unbound fields that are populated
via code? Do you recommend I just get lazy and split the tables into
parts bound with a 1-1 relationship, lol?

It sounds like you have a lot of work ahead, before even getting to the
point where you know whether these are the right questions to ask:-

Business case, user requirements, benefits analysis, data flow, logical
entity modelling, data dictionary, process mapping, etc etc...

It is interesting, but extremely depressing, that someone has taken a
decision about hardware at such an early stage of development: it's
normally one of the last things, when all the rest of the environment is
known.

The short answer to the last question is almost certainly no; but you are
probably a couple of months away from being able to answer it seriously.

Best of luck


Tim F

 

[John Vinson]

Hi all, (very sorry for the cross-posting, but it's late and I am exhausted)

I have been granted the honour of converting our Hospital
discharge/admission forms from a paper based system over to an EDP system.

.... with full HIPAA patient-privacy and security compliance, I assume.
Tons of fun.

It will be entered in via a tablet PC's that the nurses/doctors will be
issued. At this stage we will be merely trialing a system and we will be
using MS Access 2k as the plaform for data entry. Now the
admission/discharge form consists of well over 255 fields. So clearly we
can't take the lazy way out and add it all in the one table. )

Constructing the table such that it is normalised is not a problem. Any sod
can work that out and in fact ms have an article on how to do such a thing
(Q209493). The problem is in the presentation of the data. They want to
have the EDP version of the admission/discharge form printed out on A3
double sided and taking almost exactly the same appearance as the existing
stationery. A simple subform style report (sorry forgot the technical term,
it is 11pm at the moment) won't cut it, because the fields on the stationery
are all over the place.

Data presentation is and should be handled separately from data
storage. By all means store the data in tall-thin normalized tables.

The data entry form on the tablet will (should, I'd think) be designed
for readability and logical data entry layout. This may be quite
different from the A3 printout, which should be handled using a Report
rather than a form - forms are for onscreen, reports are for printing.

So I guess I am just after some advice... Is the best way of reporting my
normalised questionnaire through unbound fields that are populated via code?
Do you recommend I just get lazy and split the tables into parts bound with
a 1-1 relationship, lol?

Well, forms and subforms, queries, Crosstab queries for display only,
all sorts of options can be considered. You might want to look at
Duane Hookum's "At Your Survey" database for some ideas of how to
present questionnaire data:

http://www.rogersaccesslibrary.com/Otherdownload.asp?SampleName='At Your Survey 2000'



John W. Vinson[MVP]

 

[Anthony Hodges]

So I guess I am just after some advice... Is the best way of reporting

It sounds like you have a lot of work ahead, before even getting to the
point where you know whether these are the right questions to ask:-

Business case, user requirements, benefits analysis, data flow, logical
entity modelling, data dictionary, process mapping, etc etc...

It is interesting, but extremely depressing, that someone has taken a
decision about hardware at such an early stage of development: it's
normally one of the last things, when all the rest of the environment is
known.

The short answer to the last question is almost certainly no; but you are
probably a couple of months away from being able to answer it seriously.

Best of luck

No dice unfortunately. We are in the service area of the hospital. So
usually what the nurses and doctors say overides us. Because even if we win
the argument at a management level, they inevitably find a way of
undermining the project. Think about it, a 50 year old nurse lugging around
a 5 pound tablet PC is going to find it very easy to complain.

Sadly this project is to be completed in a matter of days, not months. In
this corporation, you can't always dedicate the time to come up with
designer perfect solutions. Bear in mind this is just a trial project to
see how effective tablet pc's can be used in the hospital, so the time
dedicated to this project should reflect that. If the project fails, then
we still have a fall back plan in the use of Digital recording pens
(Logitech pens). We've teed up a vendor that that has a solution for our
admission/discharge forms, but their product is still in it's infancy.
Failing that, we'll fall back to a purely pen/paper system and ICT
department will get all the blame for not being able to delivery innovative,
cost effective solutions for the hospital.

AH.

 

[John Vinson]

Sadly this project is to be completed in a matter of days, not months. In
this corporation, you can't always dedicate the time to come up with
designer perfect solutions. Bear in mind this is just a trial project to
see how effective tablet pc's can be used in the hospital, so the time
dedicated to this project should reflect that.

I'm sorry to say, but that's essentially saying that you're
deliberately setting the system up to fail. A large and complex (255
fields is large and complex ipso facto) system, with full user
interface, simply cannot be designed and developed "in a matter of
days". That's like asking a surgeon to learn to perform a complex
operation in a matter of days.


John W. Vinson[MVP]

 

[Mike Painter]

There is a large body of software available for tablet PC's that are
specific to the hospital industry. They are effective but require training
and an eager staff.
What John says is absolutely true, especially if you actually plan on
haveing anybody actually use your trial project.
Once burned, twice shy is a truism in the computer world, especially the
medical computer world.

 

[Tim Ferguson]

Sadly this project is to be completed in a matter of days, not months.
In this corporation, you can't always dedicate the time to come up
with designer perfect solutions.

In addition to everything that others have said...

If you don't have the time to do it right, how on earth do you have the
time to do it wrong.

ICT
department will get all the blame for not being able to
delivery innovative, cost effective solutions for the hospital.

** within days? **

People died when the managers of the London Ambulance service let fantasy
take priority over the reality of commissioning health service computing
systems. Are your managers well insured?

PS: this I found interesting:

We are in the service area of the hospital. So
usually what the nurses and doctors say overides us.
Because even if we win
the argument at a management level, they inevitably find a way of
undermining the project.

As a practising doctor, I've taken part in exactly the same tirade
against our IT services. Perhaps there's a useful dialogue to had
there... <g>

All the best


Tim F