dhis2-users team mailing list archive

[Sam Johnson <samuel.johnson@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Marc,

Just a quick note about your third option (using relationships): in the testing I did in 2.24, I wasn’t able to create relationships between two different entities – it only seemed possible to create relationships between instances of the same entity.

I’m not sure why this is the case – it would be great to be able to link two different entities, eg drivers and vehicles, or in your case patients and villages.

Devs, was this limitation part of the design of the relationships feature, or is it a limitation that could easily be lifted?

Cheers, Sam.


From: Dhis2-users <dhis2-users-bounces+samuel.johnson=qebo.co.uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> on behalf of Marc Garnica <marcgarnica13@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Friday, 21 October 2016 at 16:03
To: "dhis2-users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx" <dhis2-users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [Dhis2-users] Secundary geographical data needed for analysis

Hi all,
First of all, thank you for the support and the new release, it really has some nice new features that will help us a lot!. We want to share with you a discussion we have been developing this week to see if you can give us some advice.

For every single data entry (individual with or without registration and aggregated data) we always need at least one geographical data which refers to where the data comes from. This is information can be selected in the interface through the Org unit tree in the left.

But we sometimes need and additional geographical data referring to where the patient comes from. In this case we add a data element to add this data. This information is so important to create great analysis and reports so we need to think well how we want to collect this geographical data.

The first option we did was just create a typed TEXT data element where the user could enter manually the village where the patient came from. But obviously, this was not correct enough because the user can write the same village in more than one spelling way and also there was no feasible way to use this data element as a dimension in the analysis so we were not able to map the data in a map of villages or create a table with the cases by village. So we need to formulate a new treatment

POSSIBILITIES

1.       CAPTURE THE VILLAGE AS A SET OF COORDINATES
This options consists in create a data element with type COORDINATES and add it to the form. With this options we can add a the geographical information of where the patient comes from by providing the coordinates of the village or even better (in new versions of DHIS2) we can click on the map, search for the village in the search bar and capture the coordinates of it visually.
Nice feature but then the village information is only stored as a pair of coordinates, there is no auxiliary information as for instance its name. In the analytical point of view we can now show the cases in a map distributed by village (which is nice) but we cannot create the desired table with the cases by village.
Another issue in this option is that for the end-user sometimes it will be difficult to interact with the map and be able to capture the correct village.

2.       CAPTURE THE VILLAGE AS A ORGANISATION  UNIT
This option appeared once 2.25 DHIS2 version was released with a new Organisation Unit Type for data elements. Using that, we can create a new data element with type = Organisation unit to capture the information of where the patient comes from.
So in this option we can have a user with data capture permission only on the Sierra Leona hierarchy of organisation units but able to select a village for example in Benin hierarchy of organisation units.
Even though the Organisation unit type data element is the more natural way to specify where the patient comes from, we experienced some problems. Firstly, we are not able to use this data as a dimension for aggregate events information (for instance knowing how many events are registered with a patient coming from X village). And secondly, this option will mean to add all the villages included in our area of research which may lead to memory problems in our server.

3.       CAPTURE THE VILLAGE AS A RELATIONSHIP WITH THE PATIENT
The 3rd option is to use the “Relationship” implemented in Tracker Capture App. This app can create links between different entities registered in the system; originally it was created for tracking a pregnant patient and then registers to the system her new child. But we could use this relationship in another way just registering villages in the system and then linking these registrations with the patient. This is a more complex way to implement our needs and it needs a lot of research to know if we will be able to show the relationship in a map and to creates tables from them.


As I said, thank you very much. We look forward to your answer.

Marc Garnica