OneNote as a Patient Database - thoughts and suggestions please

[GavinT]

Greetings all,

I've started doing some due diligence on OneNote as a FreeForm database for
collating patient data/CRM type system.

The Hierarchy as I see would go something like the following:

Patient Notebook - ie. Database container
Sections = Patient Names
Patient Particulars 1 is to N eg
Patient Bloods
Patient XRays
Patient Vaccinations etc

We receive multiple pieces of information from a variety of sources, so the
idea of
mapping free form to certain pages is appealing.

Ideally we could structure a template to capture patient data in terms of
name etc. Looking at the search functionality it would 95% of the time hit
the required page.

Although reporting isn't seen as the most major of importances, it would be
good
to be able to match a search since last visit ? (I thought searching through
the metadata tags of last edited might be able to yield a result)

To date, I've been unable to create a multiple page template eg. a New
Patient/Section would automatically create Personal Particulars, Bloods,
XRays etc. (The copy and paste analogy just seems a bit messy)

The Database would be small most probably catering for approximately 3000
patients.

I'm curious to hear of other people who have tried setting up similar
notebooks or who could provide some direction.

Regards

Gavin

 

[Erik Sojka (MVP)]

Stop using the word "Database" and you may be onto something. You're
kind of looking for a more structured application than ON is designed for.

Using OneNote in this fashion seems possible, but the lack of a rich
programming environment in the current version will frustrate you when (not
if!!) data entry is not done consistenly with each new patient/record.
Using a true database system with error checking and validation code
will be more useful IMO. There may also be HIIPPA requirements in play
which ON may not be able to provide.

Creating a multi-page template - can't be done from within OneNote, but if
you create a single template containing the multiple template pages, you
can copy/paste that section from Windows Explorer for each new patient and
ON will pick it up.

I would caution against stacking 3000 or so new sections in a single
Notebook. OneNote can handle the data load, but you will be scrolling
scrolling scrolling to find individual records. Maybe use a Section Group
per letter? That way you only have to scroll through 3000/26 sections (on
average) to find the patient record you're looking for. The Search
function would help with this of course, but you're searching through
unstructured data when a true DBMS would be better.

If you are really looking to show off your snazzy Tablet PC, you might want
to look at the offerings at http://www.abletfactory.com/ - that developer
(another MVP) specializes in various types of medical data entry, and has
some neat software which makes use of OneNote.

 

[Josh Einstein]

Actually OneNote can be very useful for this scenario and I am currently in
the planning stages of doing a very similar product for a customer of mine
which involves bidirectional synchronization of data from Outlook and
OneNote. The API is actually pretty useful for this kind of thing, but it is
an awful lot of work and not something you could do without potentially
expensive software development.

Josh

 

[ali]

Hi Gavin, I am a physician and I am curently using onenote 2007 for my
medical records. It works very well. I have made my "pt charts" as templates
including tabs for history & physical, reports, letters, images, etc and just
entering the datat during consultation using my tablet pc. It syncs with my
"server" (ie my secretary's pc) and I can scan any paper documents and paste
them in as PDF files. Is that what you had in mind?

Ali

 

[GavinT]

Hi Ali,

that's pretty much what we have in mind. Would you mind sharing any of your
templates. I don't mind reciprocating any of our development. The parent
business (QEEGs for diagnosis of ADHD, Depression etc) has about 32000
patients, 3500 Doctors. We are currently trialling OneNote with some fo the
patient sessions to see how quick we can come up to speed.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Regards

Gavin

 

[Rainald Taesler]

GavinT shared these words of wisdom:

that's pretty much what we have in mind. Would you mind sharing any
of your templates. I don't mind reciprocating any of our
development. The parent business (QEEGs for diagnosis of ADHD,
Depression etc) has about 32000 patients, 3500 Doctors. We are
currently trialling OneNote with some fo the patient sessions to see
how quick we can come up to speed.

I'm a true ON fanatic. But Me shudders if I think of a scenario like
yours.

Such masses of data need a *database*.
Impossible to handle 32.000 patients and 3.500 doctor's work with
notetaking application.

Rainald
P.S. Did you follow Erik Sojka's advice and have a look what
abbletFactory might have ready-made or what they might create for you.

 

[ali]

Hi Gavin, good to hear form you. I would be more than happy to share whatever
I have done with you. I can't "send" you the templates I made directly from
ON, because it doesn't allow that. But I can send them to you as MS Word or
PDF file and then you can print them in ON as a template. The ones I have are
all for Plastic Surgery patients so I'm not sure how useful you'll find them.
Do you want me to e-mail them to you?

 

[ali]

As for Ablet Factory. I have tried it. It basically creates a MS Access
database and links it to ON files. I used it for a few weeks and found it to
be ok, but a bit buggy and not exactly suited to my particular needs. You may
find it works for you. I asked the software designer (Fritz Schwitzer) for an
online demo and he couldn't get to work propoerly either. When I tried to
contact im about making a few modifications to it, he did not reply to me at
all. So I tried some things on my own and found that you don't necessarily
need an Access datatase. Your contact database (ie your patients) can be
stored in outlook and in ON 2007 there is a link with outlook to create new
"pt charts". Hope that info is helpful to you.

Ali