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How can I attach a scanned document to a regular Client Record

My application is written in vb6 running against Sqlserver and works in an hospital environment.

Each Client has a customer Id and invoices can be generated for each client when

visiting the hospital.

Invoice prepared is based on hand written prescriptions by the doctor .

I need to be able to scan this hand written document and save it with a particular

Client Record.

My problem is not how to scan BUT how to give the scanned a document an ID

which can be saved with this client record .

Also I need to be able to review these saved client scanned document

I will be grateful if anyone can point to me appropriate reading materials for this exercise

Thanks

Joe Winograd

I like to assign scanned documents a file name in the form:

YYYY-MM-DD_hh.mm.ss

I'm sure all those fields are obvious, but it's worth pointing out that the hours value (hh) is based on the 24-hour clock. Since the file name contains seconds (ss), the nature of scanning means that all file names will be unique, i.e., you can't scan another document without the seconds (ss) having increased. This may not be the case if several docs are stacked in the ADF and split after scanning, in which case I add a suffix (simply an increasing integer) that guarantees uniqueness. Another advantage of this naming convention is that it sorts in date/time order.

You may wish to put some other identifying info in the file name, such as the Customer ID or the type of document (prescription, blood test results, etc.), but be careful of characters that are not valid in a Windows file name (other than in the drive/path and as wildcards), which are:

< (less than)
> (greater than)
: (colon)
" (double quote)
/ (forward slash)
\ (backslash)
| (vertical bar or pipe)
? (question mark)
* (asterisk)

Reviewing the docs should be easy, since each one will be associated with (i.e., linked to) a particular Client Record. Regards, Joe

Olukayode Oluwole

ASKER

Thanks for your kind advise. Can I just clarify 2 issues before i kick of

1. Position of Files
A scanned document is an electronic document with a name as suggested.
It appears I have no option but to store them in a folder on the hard disk
does that mean my VB program will have to go to the folder to retrieve and load
the records for each client as the client record is displayed?

My real problem is that even though each document is unique , since they are not stored
in a database it appears they can NOT be indexed and therefore will all lie somewhere in the folder.

How does one ensure a quick search in absence of an index ( as is the case with a database record ?

2. Handling of Films ( eg x-ray films )
Since only paper documents can be scanned , what do you suggest i do with things like
X-Ray films and documents of like nature

Thanks

Olukay

Joe Winograd

> 1. Position of Files

You may store them in BLOBs in the SQL Server database.

> 2. Handling of Films ( eg x-ray films )

Do you mean physical film or digital images?

Olukayode Oluwole

ASKER

Can a physical xray film be stored in digital form ??

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

Joe Winograd

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Olukayode Oluwole

ASKER

Great support Thanks

Joe Winograd

You're welcome. Good luck with the project! Regards, Joe