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Most applications that use UNICODE (eg the
Internet) express UNICODE in UTF-8 format. UTF-8 uses a variable
number of bytes per characters - one byte for ASCII characters and two bytes
for Greek characters.
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Saturday, January 07, 2006 9:46
PM
Subject: [USMA:35594] Re: proper use of
SI symbols in healthcare
Paul, a field capable of storing UNICODE characters
basically takes twice the space in memory, cache, disk, etc. Here is a link to
aquick list of database tuning tips: http://www.sql-server-performance.com/datatypes.asp
. You could minimize the impact on database performance by using a properly
normalized data structure that is to say put them in a look-up table. More
information on this is available at http://www.datamodel.org/NormalizationRules.html
. If you would like further discussion of this, feel free to contact me
offline.
--
Scott Hudnall
From: "Paul Trusten, R.Ph." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date:
Sat, 7 Jan 2006 10:50:40 -0600
To:
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc:
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: [USMA:35378] Re:
proper use of SI symbols in healthcare
Hi, Scott,
Thanks
very much for this information. I found it very valuable and enlightening.
You mention high processor overhead. To what extent would this
make it be prohibitive for the use of UNICODE in defining fields for SI
symbols in healthcare software for medical laboratory and pharmacy
use?
I'm taking the liberty of sharing our discussion with
Bruce Barrow of the SI 10 Committee.
Thanks,
Paul
Trusten, R.Ph.
Editor, Metric Today
----- Original Message -----
From: Scott Hudnall <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: U.S. Metric Association <mailto:[email protected]>
Sent: Saturday, December 10, 2005
19:58
Subject: [USMA:35378] Re: proper use of
SI symbols in healthcare
Since I work as a programmer
in laboratory informatics, perhaps I could lend some insight as to why
you often see these sort of abbreviations sometimes make their way
into lab reports. It has nothing to do with an understanding of SI and
everything to do with a compromise programmers have to make to get
their software as database-independent as possible. This means if you
use standard SI and chemistry symbols in your database you run into a
primary-key violation on the UNITS table since every unit has to have
a unique value. Some database products are case-sensitive, others are
not so some databases can distinguish between mm (millimeter) and mM
(millimolar), while others can not. The best way to ensure that all
databases understand what you mean is to always use all capitol
letters but that means you have to use non-SI symbols in order to
have unique values for every entry.
Also, to be able store
symbols such as Greek letters and math symbols in text fields, you
would need to define the fields as UNICODE....and that is going to
cost you a lot of processor overhead.
--
Scott
Hudnall
From: "Paul Trusten, R.Ph."
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To:
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Sat, 10 Dec 2005
16:31:43 -0600
To: "U.S. Metric Association"
<[email protected]>
Cc: Bruce Barrow
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [USMA:35376] proper use
of SI symbols in healthcare
It comes down to
which healthcare professionals or agencies understand
the
importance of SI symbolism. If we presume to use a true
standard of
measurement in healthcare, then everyone involved must
use the same symbols.
Sadly, they don't do it uniformly. There are
even more egregious violations
of that symbolism in pharmacy
software. Pharmacists who care about this
would be grateful, right
now, to see ANY letter "g" for gram, much less the
correct, lower
case "g." But much current pharmacy software uses the same
erroneous
"GM." that much of healthcare uses. Retail pharmacies usually
do
not employ lower case on their prescription labels, so "MG"
takes the place
of the correct symbol for the milligram on most
prescription labels.
Last year, the Joint Commission on
Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations
(JCAHO) began prohibiting
ambiguous abbreviations in medical records, but it
has yet to
extend this enforcement to correct SI unit symbols. An
unfortunate,
but practical, exception to SI symbol use in healthcare is
JCAHO's
prohibition of the Greek letter "mu" for the SI prefix "micro."
When
handwritten, "mu" is is easily confused with a lower
case "m," and, I must
say, is not a familiar symbol to quite a few
healthcare workers anyway.
Better metric education, coupled with a
transition to 100% electronic
records, should one day solve that
problem.
I shall continue to urge the Institute for Safe
Medication Practices (ISMP)
to push for the correct use of SI in
healthcare.
Paul T.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jim Elwell" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "U.S. Metric
Association" <[email protected]>
Sent: 05 Dec 10,Saturday
13:47
Subject: [USMA:35372] blood tests
> I had my
annual physical last Monday, and received the blood test lab
>
printouts yesterday. It won't surprise anyone that they are all
in
> metric: g/dL, mg/dL, etc.
>
> Unfortunately,
the entire document is printed in upper-case text. So
> the
symbols really show up as:
>
> MG/DL
> MMOL/L
>
G/DL
>
> The other problem is they list microliter as
MCL.
>
> I don't know if this is standard in the medical
industry or just this
> particular testing lab. It is
unfortunate, in any case.
>
> The company that did the
testing is Quest Diagnostics. They say on
> thier web site:
"Quest Diagnostics is America's leading provider of
> diagnostic
testing services, performing laboratory tests for more
> than
500,000 patients each day."
>
>
Jim
>
>
>
>
> Jim Elwell, CAMS
>
Electrical Engineer
> Industrial manufacturing manager
>
Salt Lake City, Utah, USA
>
www.qsicorp.com
>
>
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