Populating repeating field from related record

[Flying Trout]

My first post, so bear with me. I'm a Doc who has been using FM for the past 5 years to do my patient records. There are several tables in the DB that relate things like medications, tests, other physicians, and individual office visits to a core table (Patient Core Info). I use three portals on my "Office Visit" layout to display medications, recent tests, and physician relationships. Although the portals reflect correct information on the day the office visit is created, every time I change a medication it shows up as a change in all the old office visits as well. What I need, I think, is a repeating field that would be populated by the "active" medications on the day the visit occurred, and therefore would be constant with respect to that visit. Any help or direction pointing would be greatly appreaciated.

[comment]

If you want to keep history of the prescriptions/dosages, then you shouldn't be changing anything. You should create a new record. You could also make Medications a child of the Visits table, rather than of Patients.

[Flying Trout]

Thanks for your idea. I'd thought of something like that, but I still need to have medication list as a child of the "Core Data" table so I can write Rx's when the patient isn't in for a visit. Also, if the med is a child of each visit...

1500 patients, many with more than 10 meds, many with more than 20 visits. Seems like a lot of records pretty quickly.

[comment]

If you don't want to attach prescriptions to visits, then you will need something else to determine their status over time - like a pair of StartDate and EndDate fields.

This way you can set up a relationship to show a patient's medications/dosages that were in effect at the time of a visit - or on any given date.

The amount of records you will need is given by the amount of information you want to track. The amount of information is the same whether it's stored in separate records or in fields - but separate records can be easily managed (find, sort, report, etc.).

[Flying Trout]

Thanks. Probably the best solution, though I'm not looking forward to entering in starting dates on all the current meds.

Still curious about how to populate a repeating field from related records.

[comment]

I'm not looking forward to entering in starting dates on all the current meds.

That's where scripting can be useful.

populate a repeating field from related records.

What would be achieved by that?

[Flying Trout]

Well, one reason is just to know if its possible. The other is that I use FM Touch on my iPhone to keep track of patient records. I've figured out how to use repeating fields on FM Touch, but not portals.

[comment]

Anything is possible if you invest the effort. Consider, however that:

• a repeating field has a fixed number of repetitions, while a portal has no such limit;

• a repeating field could be a calculation showing data from related records - but then it wouldn't be editable. If, OTOH, you copy the data from the related records into a repeating field, you would then need to replicate every modification made to the data - a cumbersome and vulnerable process.

In short, your time might be better spent learning how to use portals on FM Touch.

[Flying Trout]

Thanks for the good advice. Wasn't sure that I could use portals in FM Touch, but it certainly worked. I'm learning that the answer you want may not be to the question you ask.

[comment]

the answer you want may not be to the question you ask.

LOL, on these forums that's more often true than not.