I own/operate a small medical transcription company.

A client has approached me to come up with something that they can use to pull up old patient reports and view them on their computer.

They have four different locations, so I assume it's going to have to be some kind of web access database. At a minimum, they will need to be able to search by patient name and/or medical record number.

All reports are transcribed in Microsoft Word, so the actual files stored in the database will be in .doc format.

I'm not opposed to building a small server in my office that they can access, but I'm at a loss as to where I would go from there.

Any help or ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Your first step involves lawyers and HIPPA.

Your next step involves translating those Word documents into something readable.

Your third step involves building a database, and a web application to expose it over the internet. There aren't really web databases, there are just databases, and web server code that acts as middle man.

Originally Posted by Learning Newbie

Your first step involves lawyers and HIPPA.

Your next step involves translating those Word documents into something readable.

Your third step involves building a database, and a web application to expose it over the internet. There aren't really web databases, there are just databases, and web server code that acts as middle man.

HIPAA and legal issues I will cover.

I don't understand what you mean by translating Word documents into something readable. Word documents are already readable. Is it a matter of a database-friendly format?

You'll have to excuse my ignorance, but this is the first time I've ever had to deal with a database issue.

Is there specific software I can use for this? I guess I'll do some research and see if I can figure something out.

In a Word format, the most you would be able to do (database-related) would be to save the filename path to the database so that the client could just open up the word file. However, they won't be able to search this and it would be inefficient and defeat the purpose of using a database. So what was meant by translating it into something readable, was that it should be database-friendly. If there is a specific format to the files, you may be able to automate the process to convert it into flat text and use them as the fields in the database (like if they have Patient Name: blah, Patient History: Blah, etc) then just have those as the columns.

Originally Posted by nasaboy007

In a Word format, the most you would be able to do (database-related) would be to save the filename path to the database so that the client could just open up the word file. However, they won't be able to search this and it would be inefficient and defeat the purpose of using a database. So what was meant by translating it into something readable, was that it should be database-friendly. If there is a specific format to the files, you may be able to automate the process to convert it into flat text and use them as the fields in the database (like if they have Patient Name: blah, Patient History: Blah, etc) then just have those as the columns.

Thank you for the explanation. I think I'm a little closer to understanding where I need to go with this.