Introduction
People work on computers, oftenly several hours a day.
Additionally almost everyone has a mobile phone in his computerless
time, a Palmtop or a similar mobile device. Personal data which accrue
over
the day could easily be evaluated if all these ways would be made
usable.
The
user should be able to choose between the things that are at his
disposal. These things could be very different depending on his
location,
the day and daytime: on a
PC he can enter his data directly with pdr or send himself an e-mail,
perhaps using a command line tool like sendmail
or from inside an office application. With his mobile phone he can
also send e-mails or SMS. Maybe he uses measurement devices collecting
data in a private memory - later he can transmit them over USB,
Bluetooth, Infrared
or something else onto a computer. And perhaps he has already a
software producing data in a usable XML format. All these ways must
be equivalent and open.
The initial situation is based on the following assumptions:
- We have at least one convenient medium
for getting personal data on a computer and the effort to use it is
acceptable.
- Data input and data evaluation do not happen at the same time,
especially
not in real time. We get data (possibly much) more frequently than they
have to be evaluated.
- That's why data input must be fast, easy and mobile. This is the
most important criterion for acceptance.
- For data evaluation the time need is much less critical. There we
have criteria like capability, effectiveness and configurability.
- Data evaluation means the creation of static reports and
diagrams.
- The database contains personal data. So the database should be
hosted by the user.
Background: The initial idea was to log individual medical data (blood
sugar, blood pressure, body temperature, heart rate, weight and also
medication). Especially diabetics taking Insulin measure and collect a
lot
of such data every day, and it's very interesting for them (and for
physicians and specialists) to track and evaluate and comment them.
The applications are not specialized on medical use cases. You can use
them also for technical, sports, weather, environmental or financial
data,
for example for jogging distances and times or for the fuel consumption
of your car, the driven distances and the cost's. All what you
need is a continuous flow of numeric data.