Records For Living Community

Share Information about HealthFrame and taking control of your own healthcare
Welcome to Records For Living Community Sign in | Join | Help
in Search

Suggestion for a new feature

Last post 03-09-2017, 9:24 AM by Records For Living Support. 4 replies.
Sort Posts: Previous Next
  •  03-06-2017, 12:49 PM 1918

    Suggestion for a new feature

    Often when I'm working with the app, I'm focused on getting information recorded in the the app, and not so much on reporting. But getting information out is important when I want to visit a new doctor and must explain medical history. Its also helpful sometime even with Drs that I currently already see, as they either forget what I've told them before, or their notes are incomplete or just wrong, or they don't have the information accessible at the moment.

    My suggestion is two-part:
    Part One:
    1. create a panel (or a series of panels, whatever is required to accomplish this idea) to display and allow editing of a timeline of event. 
    2. On the panel, user selections for creating a timeline might be by "Concern (condition or sign or symptom)" or by "Activity".
    3. Give the user the option to display the timeline of events for the selected concern either graphically from left to right using scrolling to allow enough room, or in tabular format in either ascending or descending date order.
    4. Include hyperlinks on the timeline that when clicked take you to the detailed record of the item clicked (say, a visit to a particular doctor, or to test results on a certain date).
    5. Include filtering on the timeline to allow the user to specify the timeframe for the timeline, and to select what items to include on the timeline (for example, check box for visits, tests, treatments, and journal entries, but not expenses, notes)
    6. For items included on the timeline that are what I'll call "big text" items, meaning they consume a lot of space due to the amount of text (like journal entries), perhaps put just the datetime stamp and the title (or first few words) of the item on the timeline and allow the user to click on a hyperlink to open the item.
    7. Allow the addition of items on the timeline

    Part Two:

    1. Create reports that mirrors the timeline formats above so that they can be printed or saved in PDF format when that is needed.
    2. For the "big text" items mentioned above, print them the same way (datetime stamp and title), but on separate pages, include the full text of the item. So for example, if notes are not included in the timeline, then all notes on the printed list would appear in the tabular format mentioned above with datetime first and the first few words of the note. Then on a separate page, ALL notes would be listed by ascending or descending order (same as report), and on another page(s), ALL journal entries that are included on the timeline are printed similarly, so that all notes are printed together, then a new page is started and all journal notes are printed on the new page(s)

    .
    - TIA for your help!
    David
  •  03-06-2017, 12:59 PM 1919 in reply to 1918

    Re: Suggestion for a new feature

    Forgot to mention the benefit I see to this feature.
    1. It allows me and any practitioner I show it to to see the bigger picture without getting mired in the details. Doctors might actually read it because it saves them time.
    2. It also allows me to drill down on any particular detail that I'm interested in after I've seen the bigger picture.
    3. This approach makes it easier to spot gaps in the medical records. For example, say I went to see a doctor in March, but on the timeline I don't see the visit. Then I know to fix that.
    4. It can help to spot patterns or trends which otherwise might have gone unnoticed longer.

    .
    - TIA for your help!
    David
  •  03-06-2017, 1:13 PM 1920 in reply to 1918

    Re: Suggestion for a new feature

    This sounds like it may be a very good idea. I especially like the 'data hiding' approach you described, for reports etc (delegating til later/appendix).

    But I'm having a hard time understanding the detail of what this would look like, or how it would operate. You say "timeline might be by "Concern (condition or sign or symptom)" or by "Activity"." but I'm unclear what that means.

    I can imagine a 'timeline' where you can select any 'object' in your PHR (a visit, a treatment, or symptom etc) - and placing those items on a timeline. But beware - they will nearly always (or at least quite frequently) overlap. Perhaps that is the point you wish you convey?

    Another problem with timelines - in general - is scale. Do you maintain a linear relationship between 'time' and 'inches'? If yes, for many interesting things, large gaps in time makes other interesting events collapse into an unreadable heap. If you say no, the 'time' aspect of the timeline can be somewhat misleading.

    I'm still mulling over your idea, and would appreciate your clarifications.

    Thanks,
    Records for Living Support Team.
  •  03-07-2017, 2:05 AM 1921 in reply to 1920

    Re: Suggestion for a new feature

    You mention some good concerns, at least one of which I had not thought about.

    For your first point:
    The idea is that the timeline would allow for the capability to display events (that is,activities, visits, test results, treatments, communications, expenses, activities, medications, immunizations, journal entries, etc.) on a timeline on which all the events are related because they are all associated with a particular concern. Example: Say I got hit in the eye while playing racquetball. I would create the Activity "playing racquetball" with the date I was playing, and then add the related concern, which would be "blurred vision and eye pain"; for this concern, I saw 1 ophthalmologist for 4 visits, then I saw a retina specialist for 3 visits (she recommended a second opinion), and then I saw a second ophthalmologist for 4 more visits all over the course of 3 years. In each of the visits, my eyes were tested in a small variety of tests - each of these tests would be documented in the app and appropriately linked to the visit where they were done. Now finally, in the timeline panel I'm suggesting, from the first drop down I would select "Concern" because I want the timeline created to include events related to this specific concern and *not* other concerns. In a second drop down (or list) I would select the specific concern "blurred vision and eye pain". Then there would be check boxes below the drop downs to check every type of item I want to show on the timeline, for example all visits, test results, treatments and communications that are related to the selected concern. I would also be able to filter the items by specifying a beginning and ending date which would be used to determine which qualifying items should be displayed on the timeline.

    To address the second issue - scale - you could make it a user-selectable option to use a "compressed" scale that still shows relative distances between events even if years are between them (I was thinking a logarithmic scale might work). And for those situation where even that does not work, you could allow the user to override the scale by telling the app to use equidistant spacing between events, ignoring the relative time differences but also placing the dates on the events so that upon review it is clear what events happened when and that the timeline physical spacing isn't representative of the logical time that passed. With this choice, the time order of events would be preserved (probably most important), but the relative distance between events would not be accurately portrayed (which may not be so important).

    Hope this clarifies the idea a bit.
    David


    .
    - TIA for your help!
    David
  •  03-09-2017, 9:24 AM 1922 in reply to 1921

    Re: Suggestion for a new feature

    Your clarification does help, and I think this is a good idea.

    Note - you can already do something fairly similar to this with the medical history summary report (though not nearly as easily and without the focus on timeline).

    But you can construct a report for just a specific concern. Unfortunately - you cannot effectively safe this work (hopefully for healthframe v3.0.3 I can fix that) - but you can view it and print it.

    Thanks for the great suggestion!
View as RSS news feed in XML
Powered by Community Server, by Telligent Systems