Hello

I am working on a electronic logbook application for the medical
industry. This will be used in-house at a major hospital for use by
both doctors and patients.

This application will be in many ways similar to the various
aviation/pilot electronic logbooks that exist.

The timeframe for the logbook will be tracking a 2 year period, on a
daily basis.

The patient will enter his daily activities in the logbook, based on
time of day, which each day broken down into one hour segments.

This will be excel based (unless a better platform exists) and will
feature various options, based on the patients illness, such as "meds
due on ___ date", etc.

Also, an area dedicated to patient progress will be needed, such as
"Completed XXX exercises today, lifted XXXX weight on date ____"

The user ideally could graph or chart his progress based on entered
values.

Also, blackberry/PDA capability and Spanish language capability is
desired. I know this is asking alot....

Guys, could you please post recommendations on how to hire an outside
programmer to do this? Also, please discuss US or overseas solutions
(India, etc)....this project has a minimal budget. Any
companies/programmers/developers in the Excel community that come
recommended? Or is this something the Average Joe could do with a few
Excel how-to books from the Library? Project timeline is completion by
mid-2006.

Thanks

Bill
logbookproject[REMOVE](AT)yahoo.com

I'm sure many of the people that help out here would be willing to do the
work for you. My thought, based on your project goals would be that Access
may be a better application. (Database oriented.) It may require/use Excel
graphs however when talking about generically available software, Excel and
Access would be on par with a potential average joe.

This is/should be something that average joe programmer could do. One thing
to realize as a customer to the programmer, is that the programmer will need
to know not only your final goal(s) but also some of the steps you would like
along the way. I.e., how easy it should be to add activities to your list of
activities, list of medications, doctors and patient names. What kind of
security measure(s) must be in place to maintain patient/doctor privacy. How
would the software/database(s) be accessible? Internet? Home? Floppy disk to
carry into the office? When considering patients, what age range is being
targeted to be able to "train" them? Will they have access to the software
that will be used to track their information? (I.e., can they do it at home?)

With the at home features in mind, I would say that Excel would be more
likely your platform between Excel and Access. Unfortunately Microsoft does
not package Access in some of their "cheaper" platforms, and more users are
likely to try to get the Excel/Word combo, therefore making your application
available to more customers.

Not a final answer for you, but at least some thoughts.

" wrote:

Hello

I am working on a electronic logbook application for the medical
industry. This will be used in-house at a major hospital for use by
both doctors and patients.

This application will be in many ways similar to the various
aviation/pilot electronic logbooks that exist.

The timeframe for the logbook will be tracking a 2 year period, on a
daily basis.

The patient will enter his daily activities in the logbook, based on
time of day, which each day broken down into one hour segments.

This will be excel based (unless a better platform exists) and will
feature various options, based on the patients illness, such as "meds
due on ___ date", etc.

Also, an area dedicated to patient progress will be needed, such as
"Completed XXX exercises today, lifted XXXX weight on date ____"

The user ideally could graph or chart his progress based on entered
values.

Also, blackberry/PDA capability and Spanish language capability is
desired. I know this is asking alot....

Guys, could you please post recommendations on how to hire an outside
programmer to do this? Also, please discuss US or overseas solutions
(India, etc)....this project has a minimal budget. Any
companies/programmers/developers in the Excel community that come
recommended? Or is this something the Average Joe could do with a few
Excel how-to books from the Library? Project timeline is completion by
mid-2006.

Thanks

Bill
logbookproject[REMOVE](AT)yahoo.com