Thanks Bruce for the start.... answers to your questions; Reply to Matt and Dan.

[James]

Hi Bruce,

Thank you for the initiative and sorry that am replying so late here. I will reply point wise to each of your queries -

1. Having separate Hg repo i.e doing a "do-over" :  I think its a good idea to do so. With pyramid, we are almost starting afresh. The old code contains lot of experimentation, so its best left out.

2. Versioning:  I think this was the most toughest part of system, and kudos for completing it. Maybe you can use the code for a separate project, I dont think there is any library that allows versioning of objects with objects keeping track of their history. 

3. Current ZEO Server on your desktop box: Bruce, currently am thinking that connecting to your box via internet could be a problem here in India. Can we have a system such that the server is setup on individual boxes with a sandbox and the changes later pushed to main server when the internet connection is available?

4. Mycin Formula, K factor, Scaling:  K constant is a very good idea. Having multiple ways of tweaking the formula to get the end answer would benefit us a lot. But still am skeptical for the formulas we have right now - until we start testing the rules with real time cases its hard to predict what will be the final formula.

5. Gettext: I am not familiar with string translations. And as you said, the strings in database like questions, answers, explanations are most important to be translated - can that be done? 

6. Knowledge object Document - The document is comprehensive and I totally follow the examples. I hope it will be possible to expand it if we have more ideas eg like integrating patient management system.

7. Can a note be added to a knowledge base object (say a rule) after it has been promoted? I am not clear about the promotion flow. Suppose there are sandboxes send for promotion, the expert goes through them and adds changes & notes (corrections/opinions) before promoting it. So is this part of promotion notes or sandbox notes? 

8. Are notes versioned? : Yes, versioned notes with a sticky note having a summary will be better.

9. Can promoted notes be changed? : No, as we discussed on chat, notes have to be brought back into sandbox to be changed.

10. Do we need to be able to attach notes to individual lines in the rules?  Or just to the whole rule object? :  Yes, its very important to have rules to individual lines as that will allow better debate. Also we need a note to whole rule object too.

11. Diagnosis vs Rule: Yes, I think its important to have separate objects. Also, rules are present for treatment and investigation independent of diagnosis.

12. Help Text : Yes, we can postpone this for now. But in the long run its very important to have help text, infact we need an explanation facility - something we have to start discussing once basics are done.

13. UI Mockups: Thanks for the screens. But am thinking since doctors are mostly non technical people they would like to see screen more verbose and much simpler and something that is similar to medical discussion format. I will try to give a shot to make a few mockups from a doctors perspective. 

14. Sphinx documentation: Having new Hg repo, means new documentation?

15. When the expert goes "oops, shouldn't have promoted that!".  What does he do to fix this problem? : I think the second option is best: bring the promoted version back to sandbox and correct the problem.

16. Merge problem: The current option of merging seems best to me.

17. Directory Structure: I will need some time to rethink about the whole structure again, and I will reply that in the next email along with UI mockups.

18. UI Screens: I think this can be best answered by Matt and other HTML gurus.

This answers all of the questions we had so far. And again, thanks a lot Bruce for your patience and help!

Dear Matt, I tried installing UEMR too but couldn't. It requires older zope, python 2.4.3 and its currently not being developed - so do you think having a fresh project with pyramid and ZODB be a better idea? We can start with basic screens just to store patient data and then move on to make it more complicated with lab investigations etc. Another question we had was for expert system on pyramid - which is the best templating system?  Mako? Also do you advise having Plone for EMR and Pyramid for Expert System separately, is it feasible to combine them or is it more appropriate to use pyramid for both? 

Thanks and sorry about the delay in reply.

Dear Dan, Hi! We dint get to meet yet. Bruce told me about your EEG project and I think it will be great if you can develop a ECG project too. Unlike EEG, ECG has wider impact and helps in life threatening conditions. ECG reading is very important for doctors but at the same time very difficult for someone who is not in regular touch with the analysis and when one doesn't have enough experience/training. There are commercial ECG machines that give analysis but they do not give the diagnosis or explanation, if you can build such a system it will have a very widespread use. You can keep the source open source but can also have business by selling the ECG machine (with its advanced features) to hospitals and clinics. Please let me know your thoughts on this. Thank you.

Guys, last month I was very busy due to the hectic schedule of extra duties and I hope this month I wont have much of that and can concentrate on the project more. Thank you for the support.

Warm Regards,

Dr. James

[Matt Barkau (public)]

On Wed, Aug 31, 2011 at 10:48 PM, James <james...@gmail.com> wrote:

UEMR ... do you think having a fresh project with pyramid and ZODB be a better idea? We can start with basic screens just to store patient data and then move on to make it more complicated with lab investigations etc. Another question we had was for expert system on pyramid - which is the best templating system?  Mako? Also do you advise having Plone for EMR and Pyramid for Expert System separately, is it feasible to combine them or is it more appropriate to use pyramid for both?

In the short-term, we could reuse the UEMR templates in Plone with less effort than reworking them for Pyramid (using ZPT), however for the long-term, using Pyramid would provide scaling and maintainability advantages.  So it's a classic pay now vs pay later scenario.  Bruce might have other thoughts after looking at the UEMR templates to see how easily they might fit in with the current system.

Guys, last month I was very busy due to the hectic schedule of extra duties and I hope this month I wont have much of that and can concentrate on the project more. Thank you for the support.

I can only imagine how busy things might be for you.  Should we watch a Bollywood hospital drama to get a sense of it?   :)

Matt