Documents storage format

We encourage users to post events happening in the community to the community events group on https://www.drupal.org.
emilorol's picture

Hi,

I need to put together a solution to store health documents for the company I work with. Drupal is the platform, but I am not sure in what format should I store the documents. Documents will be viewed from the web (remotely), but also locally in the office.

Real life situation:

  1. I might be ask to put together all the documents for a patient for the last 4 years and this might be around 10K documents and the size of all of them around 600MB in PDF at 300 dpi.

  2. I want the staff to be able to pack the documentation for themselves in case it is requested. So, I plan to create a module that will look for the documents and merge them into a single PDF.

  3. My issue with storing all files as PDF files is the need for a plugin and it is not as fast as an image to see on a mobile device, but will it be worth to store all in JPG or PNG to the re-convert it to PDF when I want to export it?

So to conclude I want a format that will allow me to be delivery fast to the person reviewing the documentation and also fast while loading in a mobile device with a cellular network connection.

Ideas?

Comments

mongodb storage

fndtn357's picture

is it smart to consider mongodb storage instead - docs usable.

***modifying this response,
MongoDB is not acid

Use CouchDB or other instead.

Documents as files

emilorol's picture

I like to keep documents as files. Yes, there is an issue with a path changing making the document un-reachable, but that is not the end of the world and I even see a performance benefit on having the documents as files.

I am just looking for a reason why to pick one document format over the other.

Emil Acosta
"In the computer business you’re either a one or a zero and I am determined never to be zero."

PHI and reporting tools

franc23's picture

As a general disclaimer, whenever you are working with health data, under new government regulations, you need to consider PHI and data security as your top most priorities. Any negligence on this part will lead to serious fines down the road.

That being said, when you are talking of data in the order of 600MB, there are established software like Crystal reports or Active reports or SSRS reports. The basic concept is to generate these reports on a separate server, so that the general users are not impacted. If the report generation crashes or is slow, that will only impact that part of the website and other users can go on about their daily operations like nothing happened.

Doing a quick search brought this up for PHP - http://stackoverflow.com/questions/747103/something-like-crystal-reports...

Lastly, the health industry wants to be able to see these reports in pdf or excel format. I believe that the end-user demand should be the criteria for selecting the data format.
Good luck with it.

Final solution

emilorol's picture

Just in case someone is running in a similar situation. Here is my final solution:

  1. Save initially each record as a single page PDF

  2. Create a node with every single page

  3. Use the module "PDF Preview" to have an image per pdf

  4. When viewed from the web show the image

  5. The print option will show the PDF

Note: These step do not show the rest of the logic of my project. Also what franc23 mention about PHI and data security is completely true and you should understand it before proceeding to avoid troubles in the future.

Emil Acosta
"In the computer business you’re either a one or a zero and I am determined never to be zero."

Healthcare

Group organizers

Group notifications

This group offers an RSS feed. Or subscribe to these personalized, sitewide feeds: