Database for Western Chinese Medicine Practitioners

[Li]

Hi there,

I know this is a very specific and possibly too narrow commerically an area, but I know a helluva lot of Chinese Medicine practitioners that need an easy way to translate Traditional Chinese medical terms to the specific english standard words as outlined by the WHO. It would make a HUGE contribution in the transmission of TCM knowledge East to West if it could be done. What do you guys recommend I could do to get this going?

Cheers
Lionel

 

[mikelove]

We had a customer who said he was working on putting together a PlecoDict-friendly version of the Wiseman dictionary a while ago, but we haven't heard from him lately so I don't know what the situation is with that.

We're planning to launch our first subject-specific dictionary (an English-Chinese business one) in a month or two, so if sales for that go well we would certainly consider seeking to license a traditional Chinese medical dictionary for PlecoDict. Or if there's a freely-distributable dictionary of Chinese medical terms online, we could look into putting together a PlecoDict version of that.

 

[Li]

Thanks for the reply Mike. An Ann from one of the Chinese Herbal Medicine boards asked me to say hello BTW... anyway, do you still have this person's contact? Such a dictionary would be something I guarantee you at least an ENTIRE CM COLLEGE would want to get their hands on, since in the Seattle Institute of Oriental Medicine everyone is required to learn medical Chinese! It would be something very easy to get the word around with too, as the Western Chinese herbalists interested in such things are a very well networked bunch of people.

If there is any way to make the decision for you guys to adopt such a dictionary, I and many othes would be very grateful, and will do all we can to make sure it is a commercial success for you.

Cheers
Lionel Chan

 

[mikelove]

It does have a lot to recommend it, I'll agree... we're very big on word-of-mouth advertising and this is the sort of thing that can generate an awful lot of it. Especially given the Pleco-related discussion lately on a couple of those Chinese medicine lists. Plus, there are lots of MDs who carry Palms, and the success of other Palm software for MDs (like ePocrates et al) suggests that there's a big market out there for portable medical information.

So I can't promise anything, but I will make some inquiries and see if there's any way we can do this without waiting to see how the E-C business dictionary works out.

 

[Li]

Tanks Mike, you will not regret it I promise!

Cheers
Li

 

[chao-ren]

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

 

[mikelove]

The new Filemaker does look nice, but we're actually planning to switch to the open-source SQLite format for user-created databases in PlecoDict 2.0. We'll provide our own front end to it in the PlecoDict desktop software. But if you prefer to use Filemaker's interface I'm sure someone has developed a mechanism for data exchange between Filemaker / Access and SQLite - we're planning to use an open, documented database schema so it should be pretty easy to map fields between some custom-developed format and ours.