String Parsing - Pharmaceuticals?

[RobS23]

If you've had to do this you will know exactly what I'm talking about!

If anybody has experience of parsing the mess that are free entered preparation-form-dose strings or has developed solid methodolgies or (fingers crossed) some sort of tool I would really appreciate any insights that you may have.

Thanks in advance guys

 

[JayKusch]

Good Luck!! I am sure I can represent many of the developers in this forum when I say ... Its an on-going project. I have seen very simialar issues at various contracts/jobs I have had in dealing w/ Contact Information. That would be information like FirstName, MiddleName, LastName, Suffix as well as Address1, Address2, City, State, Zip, Phone ...)

If a free-form is given to a user ... BY GOD they are going to enter every variation known to man and the list of permutations in each of the fields listed above WILL ALWAYS GROW!!!

The only way to really get a handle on it is to "TRY" to have the interface changed to restict the user from entering anything he/she chooses. Easier said than done when you are the DBA/Developer and the software development group is across the hall or even in another state or country.

I have found that you can probably "cleanse" about 90% of your issues and write scripts to rework the enteries made in the future ... but you will NEVER get it to be 100%

So good luck and don't expect perfection!

Thanks

J. Kusch