This is a topic of interest and one that will surface again as the need arises in the future
to be able to perform operations testing and verification of records-based applications.
The approach that appears interesting is the generation and maintenance of two types
of records: records identifiable as test records (e.g., data fields are obviously occupied
by test data) and pseudo-Patient records that are identifiable as such.
The test record system would have as a goal the test and verification of data field entries,
e.g., data format and limitations. The pseudo-Patient record system would have as a goal
the use of pseudo-Patient records as input test data to operational systems to verify
system loading, performance and scaling. These records would also be usable as record
examples or 'worst-case' data records.
From an IT systems administration viewpoint these type of tools will be necessary, but
they will also become necessary to subsystems and applications providers as well for at
least test and verification purposes. The use of actual Patient data should be discouraged
based by security requirements.
Each records-based system should have tools of this nature deployed. Do any of the existing
records-based system have these type tools available ?
Regards!
-Thomas Clark
Fred Trotter wrote:
What Walt and I were talking about was the need for a standard set of test data for FreeB.
FreeB has passed tests at claredi and other EDI test services using the dummy server that comes with FreeB. But in order to fully test FreeB we need to have an EMR.
Walt works with OpenEMR and suggested that FreeMED and OpenEMR model the same "sample provider" so that we could more easily test both the EMRs themselves and FreeB.
We are going to be working on this in the coming weeks, but we wanted to
make our work generally useful to others, as well as integrate any
exisiting work.
If you are interested in this issue please subscribe to the freeb
mailing list http://freeb.org where we will be continuing this
discussion on a technical level.
Thanks,
