Okay I am working on a Web App for Dialysis patients to enter their nightly flow sheet information into so it can be sent to the hospital / clinic it needs to. The information is stored in a MySQL database across multiple tables since one treatment has a lot of data with it.

I already got the flowsheet template made up that just needs the data injected in to it.

This is the flowsheet of which I need to populate


My question is how do I fill it in with all the data and have it exported to XLS or PDF depending on user request. It would be emailed to them and I am not planning on storing a copy. Just load the template, fill it in, create pdf/xls from it, and email it.

First, I would not email it! Emails go through many servers before reaching their end target which allows the data to be stolen. Second, there are laws applying to medical data which you should be careful to adhere to. For example, storing the data on a shared server subjects it to being read by others with root access. Imagine if your dialysis info was for a major public figure... a lot of people would pay money to get that and might just find a server admin with fewer scruples who'd be happy to send the data along for a few thousand dollars. Even a managed, dedicated server could be risky (and potentially illegal).

If I were you, I'd create a webpage requiring login for the hospital/clinic to login to which would show the data on a secured webpage. Alternatively, you could look into encrypted emails, but most users have no idea how to configure their system to read encrypted emails (or even to generate the public/private key!).

Hopefully this helps you to solve your underlying problem even though I didn't answer your direct question.

Originally Posted by JeremyMiller

First, I would not email it! Emails go through many servers before reaching their end target which allows the data to be stolen.

Would you care to expound on how it's unsecure? Maybe provide a few keywords so one such as myself could research? Not that I don't believe you, but I like to do my own research before practicing/preaching such things.

Check out http://luxsci.com/blog/the-case-for-email-security.html or http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/security/?p=431 . However, just think about it for a short second and you'll see how it goes through at least 4 computers: Yours, your ISP's, the target recipient's ISP, and the target's computer. Each of those 4 (at a minimum) servers/computers provide weak points. Encrypt, however, and it's reduced down to 2.

The hospitals I deal with currently only accept email with either a pdf or xls attachment with the flow sheets. So that is why I was looking into having the email generated from my server so it only has 2-3 hops instead of 4 or more. I thought about making a clinic / hospital login and I am going to do that but a few of the centers do not want to log in, they just want the sheets emailed to one of their accounts.

What I need right now is how do I export the data to an xls or pdf file? And I do not want the file kept on the server, after it has been generated and emailed / download it needs to deleted from memory

~Back of topic and back to security~

This is the main company that will be using this and they have many centers all around the country. I am going to link you to their privacy policy page.
http://www.davita.com/about/company/?id=413

So no one can help me with an export to pdf / xls function??? Is it really that hard?