Tag: wrmd 3.0

The Conundrum

Over the past few years one of the most common questions we receive is about the age terminology used in WRMD. People ask us what each age term means or request to change them to something more suitable for their use. We’ve always been open to making a change to the age terminology but believe it or not, it’s turned into one of the most difficult things in the entire database to change. This difficulty stems from the fact that there are so many different age terms used among wildlife rehabilitators and other wildlife professionals.

Not only are there age terms used just for birds, mammals, reptiles and amphibians but each of those groups can be drilled down further to define even more unique ages. For example, raptors can be aged according to their plumage and of course the USGS Bird Banding Laboratory has their own category of ages. And this only considers age terms used within the United States. If you consider that different age terminology is used outside of the States, it further complicates the situation.

Another problem arises from the actual meaning of some of the age terms. For example, some words used as ages are not actually describing the age of the animal by instead are describing the developmental status of the animal. For example consider the age term “weaner”. It is used be some people to describe a young animal. However, in reality the word actually means that the animal is weaning and its actual age might be appropriate for that weaning animal or it might not not be. An animal that someone may be calling a “weaner” could actually be an adult!

The Solution

Long story short, we have literally spent the past year talking with different groups and wildlife professionals about what terms are best to use to describe the age of an animal. Not surprisingly, we have found that it’s best to use ages specific to each class of animal (ie: birds, mammals, reptiles and amphibians). As a result we have come up with a new listing of ages that WRMD 3.0 will use, listed below.

When you start a new a record and enter the species, WRMD already knows if that animal is a bird, mammal, reptile or amphibian and will only give you the options for that class. It will also still include the chronological ages for all animals in case you know, for example,  that the animal was four days old when admitted.

We think this is a much cleaner and more user and patient-friendly way to record ages. Fortunately, most of the ages already recorded in WRMD over the past 5 years easily match up to the new choices. However, some of them will need to be translated  to jive with the new system. We’ll take care of that for you!

We hope you enjoy the new animal age system! Please let us know if you have any questions or suggestions!

Now that we’ve made this change it begs the question about developmental status. This is something that we want to explore further but to be totally honest we have no idea how to do it because at the end of the day, that’s something that has to be judged and assessed by a person.

In WRMD 3.0 you can still print, email and export records. In addition to these options we are introducing the ability to transfer a record to another account. This is an idea that was discussed in the early days of WRMD but there weren’t enough accounts to justify the feature. There are now nearly 200 accounts and transferring records between them has become much more relevant.

Transferring a Record Only Requires 3 Steps:

1. First, identify who to transfer the record to.
2. Second, specify if the record is being transferred as a copy or for collaboration.
3. Click Transfer Record.

Transfer As a Copy Vs. Collaboration

The difference between these two is pretty simple. As the text on the screenshot above says:

“You may transfer this record to another account as a copied version or for collaboration of a shared version. The recipient account will be sent a transfer request message, allowing them to accept or deny the transfer. Transfers can not be undone.”

By default WRMD will transfer a copied version of the record to your chosen account. The two versions will have no connection to each other and any information written on one record will not be seen on the other.

If you choose to transfer a copy for collaboration, the recipient account will share a single record with you and anything recorded by either of the accounts can be seen by the other. This type of transferring a record can by helpful if, for example, you take a patient to another center for a surgery and that center needs to record that they admitted the animal. They can then write in there information on their record which will then be available on yours as well.

With either option, each accounts record will have its own case number.

Accepting the Transfer

Once the transfer request is made the recipient account will be sent a message asking them to accept or deny the request. This way accounts cant just dump their records into any another account.

After the transfer has been accepted the record will then be created in the recipient account. If the record was transferred for collaboration then both accounts will see a message on top of the record reminding them.

Lets Talk About Speed

(Warning: this blog post is kind of “techy”)

We are acutely aware of the speed issues that WRMD is currently facing and to be honest it’s actually very embarrassing. Basically (at the risk of sounding arrogant) the problem is stemming from our growing popularity. The number of accounts and their users continues to grow and unfortunately our servers aren’t keeping up with the demand. That’s all going to change in WRMD 3.0. WRMD has grown far from being a simple application used by a handful of rehab organizations. It’s now a full on web application that has very serious demands on it. As such, it needs to have a scalable server backbone and a framework built for optimization of resources. Without trying to sound to “techy” I’ll explain how the demand will be able to scale as needed.

Our server setup will use a load balancer to distribute traffic to as many web-servers as needed. So if demand gets high during the summer then we can just add an additional web-server to help with all your requests. Those web-servers will only be responsible for displaying WRMD to you, while behind them will be a very large database server that will handle all the heavy lifting. If this doesn’t make any sense to you then just check out the diagram below.Servers are only part of the speed equation, the software itself also needs to be efficient at everything it does. A major part of our development in WRMD 3.0 is to maximize its efficiency. Rather than explaining all the nerdy things that we are doing in detail I’ll just tell you that everywhere that we can cache, queue, optimize or schedule a task in WRMD 3.0, we are. Our goal among other things is to have WRMD 3.0 be as quick and responsive as possible so that this database is not slowing you down from helping your patients.

One of the updates that WRMD 3.0 will have is a new way to record locations. But, before I explain how this new way will work, let me first explain the problems that we are trying to solve (if you don’t know them already).

In the current version of WRMD there are 4 major problems with recording the locations of your patients.

1. There are two places to record the current location, the enclosure field and the homecare extension. Which one should be used?
2. It’s difficult to see at a glance where the patient is. This is partly because of the location of the enclosure field but also because (again) there are two places to record the patients location.
3. It’s difficult to enforce the same spelling and format of your enclosures.
4. Users are responsible for recording the location history of a patient. This might seem unimportant but it actually can be a helpful tool when trying to manage a disease outbreak or tracking how long a patient was in an enclosure.

In WRMD 3.0 we think that we have solved all these problems in a very simple way. You may recall from the previous blog post there was a picture of the WRMD 3.0 Initial Care screen. On that screen you can see that right up top are two panels, one identifying who the patient is and the the other identifying where the patient is. This new Location panel will serve as the single place to manage a patients current and past locations.

To record a new location for your patient all you need to do is press the Enter New Location link and fill in the displayed form. Typically, when an enclosure is written down we describe the date the animal moved in, the area where the enclosure is and the name of the enclosure. Only the Date, Holding At and Area / Room fields are required. Once the location information is saved you will be able to see exactly where the patient is without having to scroll around the screen.

When you want to record that your patient has gone to homecare with somebody, just create a new Location record but change the Holding At field to Homecare. The Area / Room field will change to Caregiver and the Enclosure field to Address.

Now that you can record homecare locations directly on the patients record there is no longer a need for the homecare extension. For this reason we will be discontinuing the homecare extension with WRMD 3.0. If this frazzles you then remember that these changes are far better for you for simplicity. Also, none the features that are available with the homecare extension will be lost, you will still be able to produce the same reports. In fact some reports will be much better because of the detailed data being recorded.

Another great benefit of this change is that a patients location history is recorded automatically for you. Once you have recorded multiple locations for a patient just click the History button below the current location and see where the critter as been.

So now we have one place to record locations, location history is saved automatically and the current location is visible right up top. That just leaves enforcing the same spelling and format of your enclosures and we think that we’ve got a simple solution for that, too. Within the settings area there is a new screen for you to identify all the Areas/ Rooms and Enclosures at your facility. Just fill those fields in and now when you create a location record you will get an autocomplete suggesting which value to use.

Tell Us What You Think!

This is a significant change to WRMD that we have been thinking about for a long time. We also think that its going to be a great change that will be well received from the users.

The very first thing to learn about WRMD 3.0 is that the application has been completely redesigned with a new look and feel. Not only does it look great but, even more exciting is that WRMD 3.0 is designed to be completely responsive to the size of your device. In other words, it doesn’t matter if you are using a desktop computer, a tablet or a phone, WRMD will look and work great on any of them. In fact we have been trying to make the phone/tablet version of WRMD 3.0 feel as if it is a native application on your device.

Here Are A Few Screenshots of the New Look and Feel So Far

And Here Are the Responsive Versions

The changes in design are almost completely aesthetic in nature. It’s mostly just a re-branding of the application to look much more clean and user-friendly. We have tried very hard not to change too much so that you and your volunteers will still be familiar with where things are. However, there are a few design changes that do affect user experience, such as the main navigation moving to a new location (see below for more details). We are also going to be introducing a much better way to manage your patients enclosures and homecare records. We’ll discuss this in a future blog post but as a teaser you can see what it looks like in the above “Initial Care” pictures. What you will see is the patients identification details (we call this panel the cage card) to the left and to the right the patients current location. That means that when you go to any patients record, the first things you see right up top are Who Is This Animal and Where is It?

Improved Navigation — Here’s Everything You Need to Know:

• The main navigation (Rescuer, Initial Care, Continued Care, …) used to be in the header. Now it’s within the records. Ta da! The purpose behind this change is to more closely relate the records with their navigation.
• We’ve moved the Dashboard link to the side under Quick Links.
• You can now share a record (print, email, export, transfer or duplicate) from the Share drop down menu to the right of the main navigation links.

Basically, we’ve cleaned some things up and moved a few things around to make room for some other new and exciting things. Stay tuned…

Give Us More Feedback

We are listening to your feedback and greatly appreciate your time giving it. If you have something to share with us please do!

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