Making difficult things easy: use of a relational data base for pharmacy management.
No one in the department was a proficient data base programmer. Yet we found that it was possible to learn Paradox in a very short time and apply it to many previously time consuming management problems. Some of the other applications we are working on are antimicrobial use data analysis, investigational drug use tracking, personnel records, publication indexing, drug information, clinical services tabulation, and work load statistics. Previously, we would not recommend the do-it-yourself approach when it was necessary to know a lot of technical details about programming. However, the ease and power of some of the new products leads us to change our minds. What was formerly a frustrating and boring aspect of management can be made into a creative challenge that can result in answers rather than in just more paper. Paradox is available from computer stores and it requires an IBM-compatible computer with at least 640K RAM. In addition, a 20+ megabyte hard disk is recommended.
D006746:Hospital Bed Capacity, 500 and over; D007445:Inventories, Hospital; D008331:Management Information Systems; D008396:Maryland; D010607:Pharmacy Service, Hospital / Q000458:organization & administration*; D012984:Software