I have a couple of issues to write about. But this post is just to keep things up to date on this blog.

I have a version 0.1 mockup up and running here.
I'll be demo-ing this later today to the rest of the team on #openmrs

More later.

One thing I'm learning during the SOC is that updates make a difference. I got back from a 2 week trip to San Diego, a holiday of sorts, much required escape from college !

I've been working with Hugo on getting Open Flash Charts (OFC) to fit in well with the OpenMRS environment. First off, here are few things that I have completed:

1. Run through the Actionscript code of the OFC to understand how it works. This was tough initially because almost all the code was in a single .fla file that could be read only by the Flash IDE. The most recent update for OFC came in after I had tried to do the same thing : Split the code into various classes for easy handling. Now the code is far more structured and much easier to work with.
2. The data format required by OFC was fixed, I worked on it's interaction with Javascript and now the chart can be rendered by calls made to it by Javascript, all the data is passed into it as one graph object. This simplifies the rendering and allows on the fly changes to be made without reloading the swf component. With simple AJAX calls, we can add, remove and alter data within the component. Also, since we will be working to integrate the swf with html elements in the page, this seems like a good option. A working page can be found here.

TODO:
The immediate todo list consists of 2 things:
1.What I am working on currently is the functionality of the chart to chart data in the form of tuples {(x1,y1),(x2,y2),...} instead of the current form of a data series {x1,x2,x3...}. Without this, it is difficult to plot a data series that is discontinous. This is very important because it will later allow us to scale the graph on the fly.
2. Use the DWR functions to get OpenMRS data using only javascript ! (I was ignorant about this until Ben pointed this out to me recently) I had worked on creating a servlet to generate the same data in XML and javascript on the client side to handle that XML. It helps to keep talking about your work, not only to your mentor but also to the rest of the folks with knowledge about the code base !

Once this is done (My personal deadline for both of this is the end of the week, but I want to get it done sooner.) I can get down the some actual visualization work.

Watch this space for more updates !

In this post, I introduce the problem that I'm trying to tackle this Summer, and how I intend to provide a solution.

About OpenMRS
OpenMRS is an electronic medical record system that enables clinicians and medical care providers to maintain patient data without any technical expertise. From the OpenMRS site:

The organisation is a collaborative effort led by the Regenstrief Institute, Inc. (http://regenstrief.org), a world-renowned leader in medical informatics research, and Partners In Health (http://pih.org), a Boston-based philanthropic organization with a focus on improving the lives of underprivileged people worldwide through health care service and advocacy.

In the implementation of OpenMRS in Eldorot, Kenya: To date, the system has stored close to 10 million patient-level measurements on 43,000 patients who have accumulated ~450,000 visits.

1. Patient: Patient details (Name(s), family status, tribe, etc)


2. Concept: The concept is the key of the model that stores all the 'codes' in the system. Types of concepts include:
   
   • Procedure
   
   
   • Drug
   
   
   • Diagnosis
   
   
   • Anatomy
   
   
   • Specimen
   
   
   • Symptom
   
   
   • etc
   
   
   
   
3. Encounter: A visit by the patient to the clinic. (or vice versa).


4. Observation: A reading made by the clinician during an encounter


5. Order: An order made for a drug/test for a patient


6. Form: WebApp form generation


7. User: WebApp users

• Viewing a patient history of a period of time. Highlighting critical readings, allowing the user to navigate to particular observations or encounters for further details.


• Viewing the health of a certain tribe or Cohort over a period of time.


• Measuring the effectiveness of a certain drug for a group of people with particular symptoms.

Long overdue, but finally here !

I always had issues maintaining a blog. Hopefully this effort will be different.

For those of you who aren't reading this via the OpenMRS site, here's a short intro to what I'll be writing about for this summer (of 2007).

I've been selected as a student developer by the OpenMRS organisation to develop "Clinical Data Visualization Tools" for their app. This is something that really interests me as guy who's into UI/UX/ID and the whole web 2.0 thing (Yes, i think it's more than just a bubble). I'll be using Flash, Javascript, plain old HTML mainly to get the widget to work, which is nice, cause I will be learning ActionScripting while using it for a good purpose :)

I plan to keep this blog filled with development related jargon and news, related to OpenMRS. (I'll try to keep this blog for more than the summer. Having a blog related to all the tech issues I've faced sounds like a fun idea)

Until later.


*UI: User Interface
*UX: User Experience
*ID: Interaction Design (NOT intelligent design (; )