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We have a very complex SQL database that we use to keep track of patient data (we are a healthcare company) but to access most of the data for reporting purpose
by tjmaxal 16y ago
We have a very complex SQL database that we use to keep track of patient data (we are a healthcare company) but to access most of the data for reporting purposes we still have to use Excel and pivot tables.
I'd love to find a better solution but excel so far is still the cheapest/easiest to train.
- jasonlbaptiste 16y agoWhat would be the ideal solution? This may be pandoras box considering its the healthcare industry.
- tjmaxal 16y agoI don't know but I'd love to hear any ideas the main problem is it such a niche market that few people have tried to tackle the problem on a micro level. Instead most companies come in and say let's change everything and lock you into our proprietary solution for the next five years.
- stcredzero 16y agoI implemented a graphical drill-down on relational data with similar functionality to pivot tables. You could bring up an aggregate view on a table, like calls per day, then right-click on a bar in the bar-graph and choose an AND of a relationship. As an example, let's say it's "representative." Right-click choose "representative" and all of a sudden, you're looking at a graph of calls per day per rep. The cool thing about that program, was that it was based on an OR framework, so all we had to do was to map it to a particular schema, and it could work with anything. It was implemented in Smalltalk running in a web plugin. It would be easy to do as a webapp in any dynamic language with a good OR framework and chart graphing framework.
- tjmaxal 16y agocool we had someone try to shop us something like that but they had to build every query by hand.
- stcredzero 16y agoAll the queries were dynamically built just by using the Object Relational metadata. The only setup needed was to map the schema, which there was a GUI tool for. (Not graphical, just GUI.) Do you think something like that could sell?
- tjmaxal 16y agoAbsolutely
- kenjackson 16y agoThe problem is that Excel already has pivot tables for relational data, and charting. The charting isn't interactive, so that would be cool. But you're not going to get people out of Excel just for that one feature. Because there are 50 other features in Excel that they use daily.
- stcredzero 16y agoMaybe I need to build this for Rails & Django, then.
- yellowbkpk 16y agoMy previous job was in the healthcare industry at one of the top two patient information companies. I left because we had spent the last 8 years working on a protocol that was extensible enough to handle all the different kinds of data available. At first it was interesting, but once we passed 100+ individual .xsd files, it got to be a bit unwieldy. Accessing patient data is tough because it's tough to model in a database. It's tough to model in a database because every single vendor exposes data in a slightly different way. HL7, the protocol that is used as an industry standard for this sort of data, has several flavors and everyone implements it their own way. Also, the industry as a whole has no incentive to move forward. Healthcare providers (aka hospital systems) don't really want your data to be portable because it makes it easier to keep you as a customer. On the other end of the spectrum, FDA regulation has scared the big players into spending 5 hours on documentation for every 1 hour of software written, meaning it costs $20-50,000 (depending on the salesperson you talk to) for a hospital to buy a server that handles a few hundred beds' worth of patient data. Needless to say, I'm glad I left.