#235 New feature to support word processing documents as templates

[Rod Roark]

Commit for review is here:

https://github.com/sunsetsystems/openemr/commits/doctemplates

What I'm supporting here is the ability to upload documents in an Open Document format (MS Word or OpenOffice or LibreOffice), or as plain text or perhaps other formats, and use them as boilerplate for creating documents that can then be uploaed to the patient documents area in the usual way.

The uploaded documents may contain any of these keywords:

{PatientName}
{PatientID}
{PatientDOB}
{DOS}  (Date of service)
{ReferringDOC}
{ChiefComplaint}
{Allergies}
{ProblemList}
{PatientSex}
{Address}  (street address only i.e. 1224 Oakdale Rd.)
{City}
{State}
{Zip}
{PatientPhone}  (output in this form: (000)000-0000)

Template uploading is done via a new menu item, Miscellaneous -> Document Templates.

Then in the documents area, a drop-list has been added where you may select and download the document, with the keywords replaced with actual data from the currently selected patient and encounter. You can then do final edits with your word processing app, save it (perhaps as a PDF), and upload as a patient document in the usual way.

One gotcha I noticed is that the word processing apps may, for reasons I don't understand, insert XML tags randomly into the middle of keywords as you type them in. This keeps them from being recognized as keywords at download time. What works is to keep a list of them somewhere as plain text and copy-and-paste to insert them into the document.

Review and comments are welcomed.

[Rod Roark]

Pushed to SF, wiki page added.

[Pieter W]

It took me a while, and afterswards I ask myself why...... I think it is just because I am not accustomed with this new feature. This alters the way to produce patient related information on a different level. Worth to explore and I am sounding the relevance for future printed materials.

But is something like the NationNotes extra, once you understand the magic you can't do without!

Rod Thanks for this development!

The WIKI pages are in SF? Or also for OpenEMR WIKI?

[Pieter W]

While working on Rod's extra for Documents I found a possible translation option speific for these pages:

$templates_options = "<option value="">-- " . xl('Select Template') . " --</option>";

I did a search in the Google translate OpenEMR files for:

Select Template

but it did not show. Am I too anxious and have to wait for a couple of days or are there other software parts that need to be activated for new parts of software translations?

[Rod Roark]

Pimm, thanks for the testing assistance. I don't really see this feature as a key direction for OpenEMR, it's just something a client wanted so we decided to contribute it.

New wiki page is linked to here:

http://open-emr.org/wiki/index.php/OpenEMR_Wiki_Home_Page#Supplementary

as "Templates for Patient Documents".

You can enter the translation constant yourself via Administration -> Other -> Language -> Edit Definitions. I expect when release 4.1.3 is produced there will be a scan for new translation constants.

[Robert B Rovner]

Can anyone tell me how to add more keywords?

Robert Rovner