Tuesday, April 07, 2009

GNUmed plugin development - part 1

Hi all,

I decided I want to add some features to GNUmed. I could ask on the mailing list but there is really only one or two people who do the coding. I decided to learn it myself.

Part one will describe what I would like to achieve and what I need. All later stories will hopefully show my progress or lack thereof.

I am working in a large heart center. I am resident in cardiology. My tasks include pacemaker and defibrillator interrogation. Various software packages exist but rarely are they available in cardiologist's offices. GNUmed has the potential to change that.

While pacemakers are manageable defibrillators are another story. Inconsistent programming is potentially lethal. Sharing of interrogation data hardly happens.

Today we are going to change that.

We need to get skilled in python. We need to find out about the plugin stuff in GNUmed and have someone adapt the database. Karsten Hilbert offered to change the GNUmed middleware. For that to happen we need to tell him exactly what we need.

Here is what we will do.

0.) document what we would like to achieve
1.) develop a mockup GUI on paper
2.) whip up the mockup GUI in wxglade
3.) join and tell the GNUmed mailing list about it
4.) discuss and change the GUI mockup so it will be a *first usable version*
5.) check out the GNUmed source code
6.) take a good look at the source of the plugins already in GNUmed
7.) start hacking on the plugin to get the plugin displayed in GNUmed and basics like patient name
8.) announce the code and share the code with the GNUmed mailing list
9.) start documentation for our plugin in the GNUmed manual

From here on out a discussion will take place which will lead to

10.) changes to the plugin source code and GUI
11.) getting CVS commit rights and checking in the source into CVS

If you did not notice you are by now a GNUmed developer.

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