Records For Living Community

I've created a couple of skeleton PHR records using your 15 day trial. 

While the Health Frame Explorer has no trouble locating and opening these repositories, the Health Frame Viewer doesn't seem to have a clue they exist. 

Just where do these PHR's reside?

Mike,

Here's some information about the location of HealthFrame's database files.

HealthFrame Viewer was designed to support the exchange of clinical record information between patients and their healthcare providers. 

Currently, it is rare for patients and providers to both have access to electronic medical record software.  HealthFrame Viewer fills this void and makes it possible for individuals who do not own a clinical record application - such as HealthFrame Explorer - to still be able to view personal health record (PHR) data.

Given that HealthFrame Viewer provides a subset of the functionality available in HealthFrame Explorer, we did not initially consider the value in supporting access to the local databases.  In other words, we thought that if one owned HealthFrame Explorer,  why would one use the HealthFrame Viewer instead, given its limitations?

With that model in mind, the current implementation of the HealthFrame Viewer expects that the PHR data has first been exported.  The reader can then open the exported file in HealthFrame Viewer.  Future versions of the HealthFrame Viewer will likely remove this limitation and allow access to local databases, in addition to PHR exports and other data repositories.

Thank you for your interest in HealthFrame and please let us know if we can be of further assistance.

Support Team

Thanks for your response. I appreciate it.

The real question was and remains "Just where do you keep the PHR files?" Here is my dilemma, to which I fear there will not be a satisfactory resolution. I own a Mac and run Health Frame in a Windows virtual machine. I'd prefer to run a native Mac application, but that is not an issue. I have other Windowz software as well. The problem is that I do not/will not keep any of my user data in the virtual machine. All of my data is in my Mac home folder where my Mac tools handle all backup and recovery chores. I simply access the data in windows as if it were on a network drive. I suspect at this point that you are going to tell me that knowing where the PHR data is kept is irrelevant because it can't be moved. Am I correct?
By the way, I did read post 1023. The directory structure you describe does not exist on my Windows xp virtual machine. There is no 'Application Data' folder in my c:\documents and settings\all users folder. I find folders for your backup and export in c:\documents and settings\owner but I can't locate any 'Records for Living' folder.
Regards, Mike

Hello, Mike.

Hopefully we can help you configure the location of Windows folders, so that you can configure your files to be accesible by the native Mac tools.  Please note this may not be easy and can be downright 'dangerous' to your Windows installation, due to some Windows-specific constraints.

1. HealthFrame saves the personal health record databases to a location that is recommended by  Microsoft as being the file system directory that contains application data for all users. A typical path is C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data. This folder is used for application data that is not user specific and is available to anyone using the computer.  Please note this is not a fixed location that is part of our code, rather this is done through 'indirection', which basically means that it can be changed so long as Windows knows that this special folder was 'moved' from its default location.

2. The current version of HealthFrame does not have a mechanism that will allow users to configure a different location for the PHR databases.

Now for the "good" news. 

3. The reason you cannot see the Application Data folder in your Windows XP system is that Windows considers this a 'hidden folder'.  If you want to see it - and you will need to do so in order to move its contents - you need to change the default settings.   Please start the Windows Explorer application and click on the Tools/Folder Options... menu.  You'll see a "Folder Options" dialog box.  Click on the "View" tab and you should see the image shown below.  Now, please click on the radio button that indicates "Show hidden files and folders".

You should now be able to refresh your explorer view and now you should be able to see the folder.

4. This final step is very technical and requires that you use a tool known as the "registry" which can break your Windows installation.  We do not recommend doing this, but you asked how it could be done..  Here are some instructions from other sites that contain detailed information on how to move your data contained in these special "shell folders":

• PC World - Moving data to a new partition
• Kent England - Move shell folders

We hope this helps,
Support Team

Once again, thanks for the info. Following your directions I was able to 'see' the Application Data and Records for Living folders. I'm disappointed that you do not provide an option to place the database in a location other than the Microsoft recommended default. That would be high on my wish list of enhancements. It seems just a little bit arrogant for a software vendor to decide what is the best file location for every customer in every situation.

I appreciate the information you provided on moving shell folders. I intend to follow your recommendations and not fiddle with the registry and/or move any shell folders. As a next best alternative, is there any way to automatically (no manual intervention) take a backup when the software or the PHR is closed and have that backup directed to a specific location; in this case my windows network drive that is mapped to my Mac home Documents folder.
I'd just like to add that I think you folks provide top flight A+ support.
Regards, Mike

Mike,

The location of HealthFrame's database files has been the topic of multiple discussion threads in our User Community Forum,  in particular in the context of  facilitating backups.

Our development team is working on a solution that will allow our users, in future releases, to control the synchronization with target backup devices, which we believe will address most of the needs identified thus far. 

We're sorry that we cannot help you further at this point.

Thank you for your kind words about our support efforts - we try to do our best to help when we can, and to communicate with our development team on the need for specific improvements.

Support Team