System: crash

Bad news...

A power outage at the Center yesterday seems to have caused a problem with the records database giving me the error:

Error: insert failed: insert into log(date, event, user, groupname, comments) values(NOW(), 'login', 'admin', 'HOPE Center', 'success') (Can't open file: 'log.MYT'(errno:145)),

when I try to log into the system.

I emailed the moderator for the OpenEMR website, and he mentioned that "sudden power outages can corrupt the MySQL tables." He directed me to run the function, myisamchk, which is supposed to quickly repair the tables and should allow me to log back into the system.

I really hope that this works, or else I could be, in a word, screwed.

Again, this highlights why doing global health work in poor countries is difficult. It is really easy to take for granted 24 hour tech support, computer gurus galore, and even simple infrastructure such as a reliable electricity source. As always, I'll keep you updated as to the progress, but I'm afraid that it might not work.

In any event, going through all of the records has forced me to look at the nurse's systems for intaking patients, taking records, filing them, and recovering them when the patient returns. Over the next couple of days, along with working on the computer, I hope to be able to work with the nurses to create a more formal patient intake and record keeping protocol which will be beneficial after I leave whether the computer system pans out or not.