Data Entry

Data entry into PHMS database should be relatively straightforward. All of the regular data entries for,

• assessments,
• followups,
• vasodilator challenge, or
• 6-minute walk

are accessible from the Patients menu in the main window. Of course, there are a few things to keep in mind which will be outlined below.

Data entries are relatively independent of each other with the exception that an Assessment must precede either a Followup Report or Vasodilator Challenge.

For more information, please see the Tutorial

Medication/Allergy/Secondary Disease Data Entry

When entering patient medication, secondary diseases or allergies, the Add, Stop and Del buttons have the following meanings:

• Add - Adds current item to the patient's "chart"
• Stop - Indicates that the current item is stopped. For example, if a given patient had an XYZ secondary disease this indicates that the patient was cured as of this study.
• Del - Indicates that addition of the item was a mistake and should be deleted. For example, if a given patient had an XYZ secondary disease, this indicates that the person actually never had it in the first place and its entry onto the record was a clerical error.

Vasodilator Challenge

Vasodilator Challenge first requires that the tests used and dosages used are configured in the Preferences window. Please see the configuration documentation for further details.

Statistical Error Checking

A statistical error checking tool is included under the Tools → Error Check menu. This tool will scan the database and attempt to locate any errors using a statistical method.

To find errors, each numeric field is scanned. If it contains more than 10 data points, a standard deviation is calculated of about the middle 75% of the available data. Then the database is searched for any data that is more than 50 standard deviations away from the calculated mean.