> > Because there is no information to be had on this fact. The > > patient IS afflicted by such or she is not. There is no why. > > I begin to see why I spent $2000 this spring to have a doctor tell me what I > *didn't* have ...
This reminds me of a project I worked on many years ago, I was pretty much fresh out of university writing a system for a large medical practice - itwas principally for accounting purposes. I made lots of suggestions like Josh's, only to get replies like Karsten's. I the progammer wanted to codify everything so as to enable data analysis (ie linking complaints and diagnosis, etc) but the doctors wern't interested. They just wanted to write free text comments. And the reason for it (as far as I can tell) is the distinction between general practice and reseach (such as epidemiology). So (GPs) are not so much searching for new knowlege in their patients records, as applying the knowlege gained from research (done by researchers) to treat individual patients. Karsten might beg to differ, I don't know, but the "long flaky text" comment triggered some old (and fond) memories ;-) Cheers iain ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 7: don't forget to increase your free space map settings
