
   				     Communicable Disease Surveillance V1.4.1

	Introduction

Communicable Disease Surveillance (CDS) is a single-user Windows application that allows
public health doctors such as Consultants in Communicable Disease Control to record and
track communicable disease cases. It allows full details of particular cases to be entered
and then retrieved as required, in whatever manner or combination is needed. It has been
developed for a real, live CCDC in the United Kingdom (to whom I happen to be married) and
has been in daily use in her lab for over six months.

CDS runs under Windows 9x/Windows NT4+.

CDS is currently unrestricted freeware. This means that you may use it freely so long as none
of the program code is altered in anyway. It is obviously acceptable to amend the database
that is a part of the installation, or any other files that are altered as a result of the
normal usage of CDS. One condition is that I request anyone using CDS beyond a short trial
period to e-mail me to let me know. There is no ulterior motive for this - it is partly out
of my own curiosity, but also so that I can let you know of any updates.

The e-mail address is :

			ultima.thule@bigfoot.com

Bug reports and suggestions are always welcome too, to the same address, but obviously you won't
get the level of support from a freeware product as you would (or at least would expect) from a
bought product.

The latest version of this program can always be obtained at :
		
			http://www.bigfoot.com/~ultima.thule



	Installation

Extract all files from the cds.zip archive, run Setup.exe and follow the on-screen instructions.

Note that the CDS archive does not contain the Visual Basic 5.0 run-time files, which are
essential for its operation. They are omitted because they are fairly large and most people
should already have them, but if you do not (eg. you receive messages about missing DLLs), you
will need to acquire them separately and install them onto your machine before installing
CDS. It's worth doing anyway as these are generally useful files to have. All of them can
be downloaded from Microsoft and a link to them (the file MSVBVM50.EXE, 1.24Mb) can be found on
the Ultima Thule web site - just download this file and run it.



	Terms Used In CDS

Case		An individual instance of one patient contracting one infection

Patient	An individual who contracts one or more infections, each of which is a Case

Contact	An individual who is associated with a Case without being the Patient of that Case -
		Contacts are essentially just normal Patients that you link to other as you need

Outbreak	A collection of Cases that you wish to group together and identify as an outbreak

Location	Any place that has some sort of association with a Case - from a restaurant to a whole
		country, as you need

Infection	Used by CDS to mean things like Diarrhoeal Disease, Malaria etc. Infections can be
		subdivided into Organisms, then into Organism Types and then into Organism Subtypes,
		as needed.



	Usage

CDS should be easy and straightforward to use. You use the buttons at the top of the window (or the
menu items) to perform the actions you wish to. The buttons are from left to right :

Exit CDS				Shut down the application

New Case				Create a new Case
Amend Case				Amend an existing Case (the one highlighted)
Delete Case				Delete an existing Case (the one highlighted)

Organize Infection Details	Display/amend the organisms etc. known to CDS
Organize Location Details	Display/amend the locations known to CDS
Organize Outbreak Details	Display/amend the outbreaks known to CDS
Organize Contact Details	Display the Contacts known to CDS

To the right of the buttons is a drop-down box that allows one of many views or aspects of the data
to be displayed. Select the required option. This will populate the main area of the screen, with the
information matching the selected option. If Cases are displayed, these may then be amended or deleted
using the Amend Case/Delete Case controls. Note that double-clicking a Case is a quick way of amending
it.

Some items in the drop-down list contain question marks. These represent values that CDS
will stop and ask you for. Thus the (jolly useful) "Cases Of ? Between ? And ?" will let you select
which Cases you wish to view by infection/organism/organism type/organism subtype and date. Note that
the list of items displayed in the drop-down is not fixed but can be altered without changing the code
of CDS as it is fully driven by database tables.

Creating or amending a Case will take you to a screen where the Patient and Infection details can be
recorded. The Infection/Location/Outbreak and Contact details can also be amended from this screen. The
contents of these screens will alter depending upon which Infection a Case is for. Note that if an existing
Patient is unlucky enough to be associated with a second or subsequent Case, her or his existing details
can be picked up and associated with the Case using the Existing Patient button.



	Data Security and the Data Protection Act

The database maintained by CDS (CDS.MDB) is not protected or secured by the application in any
way, meaning that anyone with a copy of the database software used (Microsoft Access 97 or compatible)
can open and read the contents of the database. There are advantages as well as disadvantages to this - 
the obvious advantage being that new queries/views of the data can be added to the system by the user.
The disadvantage is security, of course. It is therefore recommended that you install CDS onto a safe,
secure, protected and backed-up disk drive. Implementing security within the application is one possible
future enhancement.

By its nature, CDS stores personal information about patients on a computer system. It is the
responsibility of the user to ensure that the terms of the Data Protection Act (or any other relevant
legislation) are observed in the operation of CDS.


	History

1.4.0		First public version
1.4.1		Minor bug fixes


	Legal Stuff

CDS is freeware. It may be distributed and used freely so long as all files contained
within its archive are distributed together and none are modified in any way (with the obvious
exception of the database and any other files that are modified by the normal use of CDS). A
condition of your use of this software is that you register it with the author. CDS is used
entirely at your own risk and it is the responsibility of the user to ensure that data entered
into CDS is stored securely and in such a way as to comply with the Data Protection Act or any
other relevant legislation. The author is in no way responsible for any damage, corruption or
legal claim arising from the use of this software.

CDS is copyright Simon Kewin, 1998 for Ultima Thule Ltd.
