What are PMSs
Pharmacy management system
- support the delivery of patient care including the dispensing of drugs
- ability to record, display, store, and exchange patient specific information
- must facilitate both information exchange with external systems (eg. EHR)
o preserving the confidentiality and security of all personal health information processed or transmitted
PSM vs EMR
o a product order/inventory management system
o detailed medication product information, including quantities, expiry dates, appearance
o insurance/health benefit electronic billing
What are Databases?
- A structured collection of records or data that is stored in a computer system
- The records or the data meant to be shared by many users for a variety of applications
the main component of a database?
- The heart of a database is the DBM2 (Database management system)
- allows the creation, modification, and updating the database; the retrieval of data; and generation of reports
Examples of DBMS
Database management system
- MS Access
- MySQL
- IBM D2B
- Oracle database
- MS SQL Server
Databases in our Lives
o Public library o University phone book o Bank o Insurance o Credit Card
the benefits of belonging to these databases
o Access to books,m oney
o Making contact with people
o Paying without cash
o Storing/accessing money
Drawbacks of belonging to these databases
o Potential risks to privacy
o Opportunities for crime
o Errors can lead to problems (credit denial)
Hierarchy of Data
Field: a particular piece of data (name + value)
Record: a collection of related data (fields) about one entity, situation, or event
Table or file: an unordered collection of related records having the same attributes (names and types of fields), representing a collection of similar entities, situations, or events
Single vs Multi-Tablet Management
Advantages
- All data kept together (like a single worksheet)
- Stored data similar to useful data entry and report format
Difficulties
- Duplication of data
- Waste of space
- Costly to update
- Greater chance for error
Normal Form
- Database normalization is the process of organizing the fields and tables within a relational database to minimize redundancy and dependency
- This process typically involves breaking tables into smaller tables and defining relationships between them
Tables Relationship
- Records in one table may be linked to records in another table by comparing the values stored in any fields in those tables
Primary Key
- Primary key uniquely identifies occurrences/records (rows) (eg. student ID identifies a unique student, name, and address)
- Cannot be empty and is used to identify the rest of the record in the table
- Eg. student number, ISBN, acquisition number, part number, car registration, model number, etc
o May require more than one field to make each record unique (compound or composite key)
Types of Relationships
1-1, 1-many, many to many
1-to-1 relationship
Occurs when one record in one tablet matches exactly one record in another table
- product -> product package
- Employee-> office
1-to-many relationship
Occurs when one record in one table matches several records in another table
ex: physical -> patient (physician has many patients)
Empolyee -> department
Many-to-many relationship
Occurs when records in one table have many associations in either direction
ex: sales person -> sales area (sales person can call many cities, city can be a sales area for many sales persons)
student -> courses
Defining Relationships
When defining a relationship specify
o Name of related field
o Fields to be linked
Always a field in Table A and how it is related to some fields in Table B
Often, but not always, “foreign key in A = primary key in B”
o Relationship type – there are 3 types
Retrieving Data
- Technical term: querying database
- Usually use SQL (structured query language)
- In its simplest form, a query consists of two parts:
o A SELECT list, where the columns to be retrieved are specified
o A FROM clause, where the table or tables to be accessed are specified
