DATA HANDLING SOFTWARE. COMMUNICATION PROGRAM USER GUIDE

Transcription

1 DATA HANDLING SOFTWARE. COMMUNICATION PROGRAM USER GUIDE Release: DHS3.doc

2 Table of Context 1 Introduction Contest of the shipping container System requirements How to install/uninstall the software Setup the the system Explanation of the Setup Menu Explanation of the Main Menu Quality Control Save Data File formats Result data file format Quality Control data file format How to use the conversion table Using workplan Exporting data to Excel Appendix A: known bugs...12

3 1 Introduction Before reading further, review your computer owner's guide and the instrument User Manual. This manual assumes that you are familiar with the operation of the computer and reader. Data Handling Software Software is a "low-level" application for grabbing data output serially from any Biochemical Systems International instrument. It provides you: Data Collection of all the result is differentiate from Data Collection regarding Quality Control result. Possibility to handle any instruments of Biochemical Systems International production. Possibility to work in background. 1.1 Contest of the shipping container Check the contents of the shipping container for the following items: CD-ROM with Data Handling Software. Cable for serial connection with the instrument Data Handling Software User Guide. 1.2 System requirements The Maplab and Maplab Plus Data Management Software is a windows application, and requires a Microsoft 32 bit Windows environment. To run this software you need: An IBM or 100% compatible PC that is supported by Microsoft Windows 95 or Microsoft Windows 98, or Microsoft Windows NT. At least 8 MByte of RAM memory and 2 Mbyte of free disk space are required. This software can run with a 486 processor, but a Pentium (or higher) is recommended. You can install the software on Windows 95, Windows 98 or Win NT. To run this software you need also a free RS232 port on your PC, to be connected to the instrument by the supplied serial cable.

4 1.3 How to install/uninstall the software Install the Data Handling Software by clicking on the setup icon in the CD-ROM directory. Installing this software on your hard disk it will automatically add the Data Handling Software icon to your program menu. To uninstall the software simply go in Microsoft Windows Control Panel and open Install/Uninstall application. Find Data Handling Software application and click on Install/Remove button. The application will be automatically removed from your computer. 1.4 Setup the the system After having installed the software you need to connect the RS-232 connector on the back of the B.S.I. instrument with a free com port on your PC. Please, be sure that both the instrument and the PC are switched off when plugging the serial cable inside the connectors. Switch on the PC and the instrument, then run the Data Handling Software application. NOTE: The first time you execute the program you may be asked to enter a valid COM port number or you must setup manually from Setup button in the main window. You can understand if there is serial communication between PC and instrument by looking in the main window of the program, to the activity LED. If your activity LED is running while the instrument is outputing data from serial port (example on the result display or by pressing LIST/LIST then the setup of com port is correct). If you are not able to collect data after having tried different setting in the configuration it means that you have a problem with the connection. Check the connection cable to be completely inserted on its connectors. Check your System configuration in the Control Panel for possible conflict of resources.

5 2 Explanation of the Setup Menu The first time you run the program you may have to use setup to set properly the communication port and data files. Click on the setup button in the main window (see figure 2 ) to access to the setup window (figure 1): In this window you can select: COM port value (the COM port in which is connected the serial cable from the instrument). Output Data File. This is the name of the file in which RESULT data are collected. If this file already exists data are appended starting from the last record of this file. Never overwrite or delete data (default name is "OutFile.txt"). Field Separator Character (the character used to separate the various field in the result file); default is comma (,). Language (to setup the language form various selections). QC settings. This is the name of the file in which QUALITY CONTROL DATA are collected. If this file already exists data are appended starting from the last record of this file. Never overwrite or delete data (default name is "QCFile.txt"). Instrument type: the first time you run the program you must setup also the Biochemical Systems International instrument you are using with the software. Select the instrument that is connected with the PC (in the above figure, for example, Screen Master 3000). The following instruments are supported by the software: Screen Master 3000 Clin Check Vet Screen Maplab Clin Check Plus

6 NOTE: If your instrument is not listed above, probably it has only a different name. Check the following table for compatibility: Compatibility with: Instrument Name Screen Master 3000 Biofot, Screen Master 4000 Clin Check Micro Check Vet Screen Screen Master Plus Maplab Maplab Plus Clin Check Plus Humalizer Junior Press OK to confirm your selection, Cancel to discharge unsaved changes. 3 Explanation of the Main Menu The main window is shown in the figure below. Once you select the instrument you can run your analysis. As the instrument reads it output the result from the serial port, so that the instrument will display it on the "Display the Result" box. Results will be automatically stored in the output data file and the Activity LED will blink informing you that serial communication is occurring. The result are automatically queued to display screen. To clear the screen, simply push Clear Screen button. This operation only flush out collected data from display window, but results remain stored in database file. You can choose to enter parameters to be saved with analysis result (alternatively the program can pick up them from workplan). In particular you can enter three fields: Analysis number : Number of analysis from the instrument. Analysis name : Name of the analysis from the instrument. Patient / Sample : Name or ID for the patient/sample.

7 The Clear button will RESET this field to empty. You can change this analysis parameters at any time. Instrument will automatically update them to the data file. 3.1 Quality Control Quality Control button is dedicated to Instrument periodical Quality Control operations. If you select quality control instrument will automatically wait Quality Control sample (see figure above). When this sample is read the instrument automatically saves it to the selected quality control data file, for further elaboration by external programs. You can exit any time from Quality Control window by clicking Abort button.

8 4 Save Data File formats. Both RESULT data and QUALITY CONTROL data are saved in ASCII Text format, so you can easily open this files with Microsoft Windows Notepad (or other text editors). These ASCII files can be easily imported with electronic sheets (like Microsoft Excel or Lotus 123), so that graphical curves can be achieved by processing this files. A description of these 2 files is given in the paragraphs below. 4.1 Result data file format Field Length [Byte] Example( ) Analysis Number 3 (00,01,02, 60-90) Analysis Name 4 (EP,QLT,MSD,FXT, ) Analysis ID 4 (0001,0002,.,9999) Date and Time 17 (dd/mm/yy hh.mm) Measuring Unit 5 (mg/dl, umol/l,abs, ) Result 5 (00000,.,99999) Flag 2 (*H,-,-+, ) Patient/Sample Name 20 (Haematocrit 1, Glucose 02, ) Age 3 (000,999) Sex 8 Alphanumeric String Every field is separated form another by a 1 byte long separator character (default is comma, but may be changed using setup). 4.2 Quality Control data file format Field Length [Byte] Example( ) Empty 3 ( ) Empty 4 ( ) ID for QC file 4 (Q..) Date and Time 17 (dd/mm/yy hh.mm) Measuring Unit 5 (mg/dl, umol/l,abs, ) Result 5 (00000,.,99999) Empty 2 ( ) Instrument Name 20 (Vet Screen, Screen Master 3000, ) Empty 3 (Vet Screen, Screen Master 3000, ) Empty 8 (Vet Screen, Screen Master 3000, ) Every field is separated form another by a 1 byte long separator character (default is comma, but may be changed using setup).

9 4.3 How to use the conversion table The convtab.tab file is a conversion table file used for font translation. In some cases happens that there is no correspondence with the font output from the instrument and the ones displayed on the screen, because to handle no-european characters the instrument may not follow the ASCII standard. For this reason every character output from by the instrument is first filtered with this table so that can be remapped in an other font. Default conversion tab is no data elaboration: this means that every character map itself so that the character displayed (and saved on the output file) is the same that was output by the instrument. You can edit conv tab at any time, but remember that having a bad value in this tab may causes error and data loss. Anyway is very simple to edit this tab: > 0000 Mans that ASCII 0 is re-mapped in ASCII 0 If you want the A character mapped in C, for example, simply find: > > > and change to: > > > This can be used to translate extended ASCII character output by the instrument if the instrument (like BIOFOT 311) was programmed with a method file likes LIO102 (containing cyrillic fonts).

10 4.4 Using workplan You can also schedule a workplan at the beginning of the working day. In this case the patient data are automatically fetched from workplan and archived in database with the result of the test. To compile a workplan choose "Edit--Compile workplan" from "Edit" menu, or click on "Edit workplan" button in the main window. The following windows is displayed: With "Add to List" button you add a patient to your today workplan. With "Delete" you delete from workplan an existing patiente. You can choose of compile a new workplan (by inserting new patientes data) and erasing the existing ones, and print it out. NOTE1: The patiente already processed are not deleted from the workplan, but are flagged in the patient checkbox. The relative field "processed" in the table are set to "Yes". If you want to insert again the patient in the workplan, simply uncheck the "Already processed" box. The field will be automatically flagged as un-processed and reinserted in the day working list. NOTE2: Only patients that must be actually "tested" are printed out. The printout will skip automatically the patients that were already processed.

11 4.5 Exporting data to Excel The software can also export the Text file in which result and QC data are stored in a Microsoft Excel format. Available export are in Excel 5.0 (Excel 95) and Excel 8.0 (Excel 97) and can be selected by the exporting database window. The figure below shows an example of exporting database: Note that exported file will be automatically renamed with the extension ". xls", typical of a Microsoft Excel file.

12 5 Appendix A: known bugs Screen Master 3000: for the firmware version below 1.25 if you enable plot in KIN and MSD tests the sample is skipped. To avoid this problem disable the graph in the instrument if you use want to use the Data Handling Software.