Re: Medical photography database
On Feb 20, 2010, at 7:15 AM, Adrian Midgley (Gmail) wrote:
> A colleague is looking for software to install in the department to
> handle, with access control, a database of clinical photographs.
I am assuming this is for teaching and NOT part of the medical
record. If I am wrong then kindly disregard the rest of my comments
and follow Donald Berwick's (of IHI.org), "The patient record of the
future belongs to the patient PERIOD."
> Spec:
> Clinical photographs of patients - dysmorphic & otherwise.
> Need multi-user access across the network, needs to be reasonably
> secure, but as will sit on hospital network drive, there is already a
> level of security on top.
Having it be on the hospital's network is essentially no security.
> This is mainly to limit access to particular
> staff (consultants, SpRs, Genetic counsellors).
> Need to be able to index by patient ID and add text comments, notes
> about dysmorphic features etc.
Keeping a patient ID in a teaching or research file is always a bad
idea. Same for name and date of birth. The only thing worse is
keeping a social security number.
> Batch output for powerpoint or just image list.
As a fan of Edward Tufte, I would recommend his Website.
> Needs to be pretty fast.
Not really a problem.
> As users will be uploading their own images, batch import is important.
> Preferably launchable via shortcut to an executable that resides on the
> same network drive.
A dozen years ago Yarger, Reese and King, in their book on MySQL, wrote
"One reason for connecting databases to the web pops up repeatedly: much of the worlds information is already in databases. Databases that existed before the creation of the web are referred to as legacy databases (as opposed to nonweb connected databases that were created recently, which are referred to as a bad idea). Many corporations (and even individuals) are now faced with the task of making these legacy databases available over the web."
> Where should one look?
1. The sample application in "Agile Web Development with Rails" would be useable with very little work.
2. Ask Philip Greenspun. You might enjoy Philip and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing at http://philip.greenspun.com/panda/index.html
He was the founder of photo.net which was the ancestor of may collections of photographs.
His friends at Ars Technica with their community solutions may have a turnkey solution for your friend.
Regards,
John M. Miller M.D.
Reply to: