[Gnumed-devel] improved medication start date

[Karsten Hilbert]

On Tue, Dec 30, 2014 at 08:07:30AM +0000, Jim Busser wrote:

> > in 1.6 I plan to implement (for one thing) the following
> > change in the current meds edit area. The line "Started" will
> > look like this:
> > 
> >     Started:    [ ] Unknown or [YYYY-MM-DD]  [ ] ~ @ level of 
> > [days/weeks/months/years]
> > 
> > When "[x] Unknown" is checked everything to the right is greyed out.
> > 
> > When "[ ] Unknown" is UNchecked the date can be edited.
> > 
> > Entering a date (YYYY-MM-DD only an example format) means
> > started-exactly-then and will allow editing even more to the
> > right.
> > 
> > Checking '[x] ~' will make the date approximate and will
> > allow for editing the level of uncertainty (do you think the
> > uncertainty needs a numerical qualifier ?).
> 
> In the case where it is presently December, and when dealing with two 
> different patients both of whom had begun a medication some time between 
> January and June, patient A might be unable to resolve it any better than 
> that (in other words, it would be March 31 plus minus 3 months) whereas 
> patient B might recall it was after the kids' return from an early April 
> school break, so April 15 plus minus 15 days.
> 
> So if there is to be a quantifier, which IMHO could be helpful, I would 
> conceive of it as a "plus minus" number of days.
> 
> If OTOH a new patient tells me next week, in January of 2015, that he has 
> been on allopurinol for approximately 10 years, then it matters much less 
> whether it was "really" 8 or "really 12".

I have decided to scale down my overengineered ;-)  approach
as I noticed that we aren't going to do much of anything with
a _structured_ started_uncertainty_level field ...

        Started:    [ ] Unknown or [YYYY-MM-DD]  [___<free text comment>___]

the comment being NULL meanding start_date is exact. If the
comment is '?' then start_date is unknown. Beyond that if
comment is set at all start_date is uncertain to the degree
narratively described in the comment. Period.

Karsten
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