University project concept (no coding experience, so advice/recommendations needed)

[Chronos5618]

Hello fellow people on the internet!

 

This is my first time on this particular part of the forum, and I'm looking for some advice on where to start on a project I am working on at university. A little background first, I am currently a 3rd year medical student in the UK, and as well as working in hospitals full time, I have just started working on an extra little side project for my own interest/extra credit. This relates specifically to radiation exposure within a medical setting- that which is accidental or deliberate as parts of scans and treatment, as well as the biochemical effects this has on the body.

 

To cut a long story short, this research has cumulated in the development of a new method of screening that can be used by GPs to assess overall radiation exposure of a patient throughout their lifetime. I won't bore you with all the details but basically what I am looking to do create a small form that can be filled out electronically (tick boxes and drop down lists of options) which will then generate a series of numbers based on the calculations done as a result of the numbers selected.

 

Example-

 

Chest X-Ray- input total number of chest X-rays

CT scan- input total number of CT scans

PET scan- input total number of CT scans

Radiotherapy- Select form of radiotherapy + select length of treatment

Has the patient lived in the south west of England for more than 5 years= Yes or No

etc...

 

I know that I can achieve the result I need with Excel, but I'm looking for something a little more polished. Of course, it is just a prototype, so it doesn't have to be a finished piece of software, more a proof of concept piece. Really, I'm just looking for a basic platform to create the demo, with a coding language that is fairly straight forward to create something that I can present to the hospital board that looks like something functional as opposed to columns and columns of numbers.

 

So...any advice on where I should be looking and how I can get started on this would be very much appreciated. I have a few months (this isn't something I'm expected to get knocked out in a night) so any recommendations would be appreciated!

 

TL;DR- Looking for a way to create a basic electronic form that can be filled out, with the aim of generating relevant calculations as a result of the options picked. 

[hk29]

matlab can do this.  also can create a gui (graphical user interface) should be plenty of stuff on the internet on how to program

[vorticalbox]

i assume this going to be for windows? I would suggest visual basic or c# as the creating the gui is pretty much drag and drop

 

create a class diagram https://gliffy.com

creating a GUI https://balsamiq.com/

 

as for the coding part lots of places on the net to learn it. can always post here if you need help with anything

[juretrn]

Working with existing assets in Visual Studio would be really simple (for the GUI), as long as you understand the basics of programming. 

[Nineshadow]

Do you also need a database?

 

You could make some simple forms with HTML/PHP and make the database with SQL.

[Chronos5618]

@vorticalbox - Yes, it would be for Windows

@Nineshadow - Shouldn't need a database, just need it to do a bunch of calculations based on user input and display a certain thing depending on the results of those calculations. 

[Nineshadow]

@vorticalbox - Yes, it would be for Windows

@Nineshadow - Shouldn't need a database, just need it to do a bunch of calculations based on user input and display a certain thing depending on the results of those calculations. 

I assume you need a GUI , right?

 

HTML and javascript should do it.

[madknight3]

If you're looking to make a Windows desktop application then you have a large variety of choice. I expect most mature programming languages have one or more windows GUI frameworks available.

• Python with Kivy (or another GUI framework)
• Java with JavaFx (or another GUI framework)
• C# with WPF (or another GUI framework)
• C++ with Qt (or another GUI framework)
• etc

[Chronos5618]

I assume you need a GUI , right?

 

HTML and javascript should do it.

Yes indeed. I shall look into those. I did a bit of HTML back in the day, so maybe it will all come back to me. 

[vorticalbox]

Yes indeed. I shall look into those. I did a bit of HTML back in the day, so maybe it will all come back to me. 

htmla nd java might be nice as it would just run in the browser.

[Brenz]

As Nineshadow mentioned HTML and JS would be the simplest option.

 

To make it look more professional and polished look at using Bootstrap to style the form elements and make it work better across different devices.

[nuc]

Most NHS computers are piles of shit. Don't go for a desktop application, the amount of bureaucratic crap you have to go through (at least when I worked lvl 3 IT support) to approve a program is enormous; wanted to change to VNC from some other pile they were using before.

 

Make it web/cloud based, so then all you need is a browser, any language can do this (your approval process can/will be easier).

PHP would be the easiest to learn, but it is very limiting. A couple pointers before you start: look at proper project structure, and do not place core logic inline with view logic (look at MVC). Symfony2 is the only worthwhile framework that will help you with some of the heavy lifting. Laravel is ok, v4 has large limitations, and terrible templating language/ORM, and v5 is basically a shittier version of Symfony. Phalcon, and CakePHP aren't bad options.

 

Don't forget tests!