I thought I would give a status report. Again, I am working of a way to populate the VA PRODUCT file from FDA data that they update on their website every 3 months.
1. I have realized that before I can add drugs, I must add the underlying ingredients to the DRUG INGREDIENT file. 2. Many of the drug ingredients are related, e.g. CAFFEINE <-- already in database CAFFEINE CITRATE <--- new import So CAFFEINE CITRATE will be added as a new ingredient, but its PRIMARY INGREDIENT field will point to the preexisting record for CAFFEINE. Thus any drug allergy or drug interaction that is tied to CAFFEINE would, by extension, tied also to CAFFEINE CITRATE. (I am assuming this is how it works, I hope I am not wrong) So I have created a process whereby the computer tries to make a best guess as to the primary ingredient--generally by trimming, successively, words from the name and repeatedly searching for the ever-shortening name. If a match is found, then it is put into a list for a user to review. About 60% of the time this works. If not match is found, this also will be reviewed by the user. A long numbered list of potential matches is then presented to the user. If a match is correct, the item can be selected for acceptance (ranges such as 100-150 are allowed). Or the user can do a custom lookup to find a better match. Or many have no apparent match (no preexisting primary ingredient in the database), so they can just be entered as is. I initially had the user answer yes/no questions about acceptibility, but when I realized that I had about 1,000 entries to process, I changed to the method above. I keep thinking I am just about ready to load the data into the VA PRODUCT file, and then I find something more to be done, but soon I will be there. After that I will explore populating the DRUG file (50) from the VA PRODUCT file. And after that, I think I will be able to use Norman Doddss code to make the drugs appear in CPRS. Wish me (fool's) luck Kevin ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.Net email is sponsored by xPML, a groundbreaking scripting language that extends applications into web and mobile media. Attend the live webcast and join the prime developer group breaking into this new coding territory! http://sel.as-us.falkag.net/sel?cmd=lnk&kid0944&bid$1720&dat1642 _______________________________________________ Hardhats-members mailing list Hardhats-members@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/hardhats-members
