Tracking patterns from client records
I wrote a little while ago about an idea I had for a shiatsu client management database program. This is a work in progress and since I have decided to learn a new programming language will take a while before it can make it’s début.
But this weekend we were discussing our initial project ideas and how we needed to research a Western disease in terms of Chinese medicine patterns. Someone asked our tutor if he find examples of how he treated a certain condition. He thought that he could but since his client information was filed by name and not by pathology that would be very difficult. That gave me an idea for my database.
I wonder if it would not be more useful to have a program that allowed one to track client treatments but be able to use that information to research responses to Western diseases. What I have in mind is a record of what complaints the clients present with (arthritis, frozen shoulder, IBS) along with the shiatsu and Chinese medicine diagnoses made in the course of treatments. This would allow the practitioner interested in how shiatsu treats a Western disease to use treatment records as a research tool.
So if you wanted to see if your clients presenting with depression followed a particular pattern of Hara diagnosis or particular TCM pattern that could be retrieved easily from such a database.
How helpful would a tool like this be to the shiatsu community? I would appreciate your feedback to this idea.
Tony Brown @ October 12, 2007
hi Tony,
I got hold of a CD database from the Austrian Shiatsu Society, which does exactly what you are talking about. you type in a certain condition and it comes up with all the points that could be useful to treat the condition. it’s in german mind but you are welcome to have a look at it (I can give it to Duncan or something).