Electronic medical records provide a clean, consistent and secure means of capturing, storing, and reviewing clinical visit data. Unfortunately, these systems are often cost-prohibitive or require technical support beyond the means of small foot clinics. The foot care everywhere project was designed to create a simple, free downloadable electronic medical record for diabetic foot care.

Foot Care Everywhere Goals:

• Provide instructions on how to perform a thorough diabetic foot exam
• Provide a free electronic medical record for foot exams
• Generate standardized secure data for later use by the individual practitioner in their in research
• Improve the global standard for diabetic foot care

Project Sponsors

This project was sponsored by a grant from the International Working Group on the Diabetic Foot (www.iwgdf.org).

Exam Sections:

• Patient Information/Demographics
• Past Medical History
• Social History
• Current Complaint
• Foot Exam
  • Neurological
  • Vascular
  • Skin/Nails
  • PEDIS Ulcer Classification
• Plan/Impression

About the Application

The Foot Care Everywhere application utilizes Java Web Start Technology which provides the ability to launch a full-featured Java application with a single click. This does not require the user to have any special software on their computer in advance of the download. You will be prompted during the installation process to install a free Java run time environment from the Sun Microsystems site.

The application is cached on the user's computer and appears to the user as a native application accessible through a desktop icon. Once installed, the application can be run without an active internet connection. However, if a connection is available, Java Web Start will automatically search for available updates when the application is launched.

Patient data is stored locally on the user's computer in a password protected, encrypted, database embedded into the application. Data may be printed as an exam summary or transferred to other applications in XML format.