Database for Western Chinese Medical Practitioners -
Gong Xi Fa Cai...!
Filemaker @
http://www.filemaker.com/products/fmm/could be a possible answer to your problem.
A few years ago I was trying to put in a medical database system in a clinic in Hong Kong. The system required doctors to key in "symptoms" and "treatments" given for each patient that walked through the clinic.
The database also needed to be so "simple" to manage that doctors who
knew very little about IT and Sql etc could easily work with the system with minimal IT support.
Anyway Filemaker was going to be an ideal start because each doctor could just carry a copy of the database with them on their laptops whether they preferred Macs or PCss... etc.. and key in their data separately. Once a week, the disparate data would
be "merged" at a central database and reports can be printed out from the main central server.
There was only one major technical problem for this Hong Kong clinic: Filemaker couldn't take Chinese characters!!!!!
(at least before version 7.0 or unicode)
So in the end a programmer was used to create the system using other databases and Delphi.
The good news is that Filemaker is finally back, stronger than ever AND it can take Chinese characters.
Filemaker also has a mobile or "carry around" version which means whatever you have updated to the working database on your Windows/Mac desktop, it can automatically sync down to your Windows mobile or Palm handheld - so cool. :wink:
One problem still remain in my mind at least. Most databases would have searches or search ability. This is not really a problem while the data is on your desktop because you could key in the Chinese characters for the particular medicine etc. that you are looking for quite easily on your PC. But it would be a big problem on the Windows mobile handheld without a Chinese character input technique/enabler. Palm, I assume you would use something like CJKOS etc..
Coming back to the idea of inputting "new words" at your desktop and transferring them to your PlecoDict handheld. I wish we could use Filemaker or other databases or even excel spreadsheet as a "front-end" . Then uploading/transferring these new dictionary entries into an intermediate "handle" or program say written by PlecoDict which would then make sure all your fields are the right lengths, the right order and the right types etc. before downloading and sync with the PlecoDict in your handheld. Anyway this last paragraph is just a thought that came to my mind when I was reading some of the other posts. The point here is that when the choices available for adding new entries into a database is plentiful, it is much easier on the end user.
http://www.plecoforums.com/viewtopic.php?t=303