The Subject Search mechanism in m.Care offers a lot of parameters that you can use to locate the subjects of interest. Whereas it’s nice to be able to search and locate subjects using all of the different parameter options, sometimes, the parameters are a bit overwhelming to use as there are a lot of them. Further, some parameter defaults may not be what you want to use for your team. This post walks through how to change Subject Search so that it only uses the parameters you wish defaulted to just the way you want them to work.

The following screen clip shows the Subject Search Screen as it displays by default:

The display presents the two most common search parameters, the “MRN” or “Unique Identifier” field and the “Last Name” field. All other parameters can be seen by click on the “Filter” button (looks like a funnel).

The additional parameters are presented in a series of “sub-tabs” named:

• Basic
• Roles
• Category
• Misc

By clicking on these tabs, you can specify various different parameters. There are a LOT of parameters though, and some may show options that you’d really rather not have your team use.

Using the configuration tools in the Monitor app, you can do two things to control the subject search screen’s parameters:

• Specify a default set of search criteria that differs from the system specified default
• Hide or disable fields

Specifying Defaults

To specify default parameters, you will need to do the following things:

• Perform a search using the defaults as you’d like them to be set
• Saving the your search criteria, giving it a name so that it may be used as a default
• Assigning the named default search criteria to the team members

Performing the Search

For this example, let’s assume the default you’d like to change is whether or not to include “Demo” subjects in the search. The system defaults to including subjects marked as demo’s in the search. Here, we’ll change that default. Using the same instructions, you can change other defaults as well.

To get started, navigate to the subject search screen. Once there,

• Click “Clear Search Criteria”

The “Clear Search Criteria” button looks like a circular “Not” sign.

This will cause the system to return the search criteria you are currently using to the default. When you do this, the system refreshes the display and presents the MRN and Last Name fields.

• Click the “Filter” button

The filter button looks like a funnel. Clicking it shows the search sub tabs. Once you see these tabs,

• Click the “Misc” sub tab
• Change the “Include Demo” drop down to “Exclude Demo”
• Click “Search”

Saving the Search Criteria

At this point, the system should be displaying you a list of subjects that does not include the “Demo Subjects” you may have set up.

• Click the Save Search Criteria button (it’s the “Ribbon” button in the top right corner of the page)

When you click the Ribbon button, the system is going to save the search criteria you’ve just specified with the name you give it. It prompts you to specify the name and gives you a chance to share that criteria with other members of you team.

In the screen clip below, you can see that I have entered “No Demos” as the name of the search criteria.

• Enter a name for the search criteria
• Click the Save button

Assigning the Search Criteria

Now that you’ve saved this search criteria and given it a name, you can use it to set it as the default for users on your team. You do this using the “Lab Notebook – Members Page”. Navigate to your “Department/Lab” and click on the “Members” page. Here’s what the Members page looks like in my set up (yours may be different as you’ll have different members for sure).

To assign this search criteria to a user,

• Click the Pencil next to the user’s name

I’ve done so in my set up by clicking on the pencil next to “Mr. First Carecoordinator” as shown below:

From this page, I can set the “default” search criteria for one of my team members. Let’s go ahead and do that by:

• Change the “Default Search Criteria” to the name you specified for your default search criteria in the steps above (I used “No Demos”)

• Click “Save”

At this point, the default search criteria has been set for this patient. Now, when they sign on for the first time, or when they “Clear” their own saved search criteria, the new default they will use will contain the “Exclude Demos” option.

That’s it. The same technique can be used to set one or more parameters into the a saved search criteria, giving it a name and assigning it to a user through the Members tab.

Note that you do not have to assign default criteria for everyone. You may have some users that have different defaults than others. That’s totally fine. You can leave some users with the system defined defaults, set others to have another set of defaults and still others to have different defaults. There is no limit on the number of default criteria you may use.

Restricting Search

In some cases, you may wish to block some of your team members from using a search other than the one you’ve defined for them. You can do this using the above technique for creating a named search and then changing the user’s options on the “Lab Notebook – Members Page” to restrict their search to just the search you’ve specified.

This is pretty simple to do assuming you’ve already built the named criteria. Simply navigate to the “Lab Notebook – Members Page” and then:

• Click the “pencil” next to the member’s name
• Select the search to use
• Check the check box named “Restricted Search”

Here’s what this looks like for me where I make sure that a user absolutely must use my “No Demos” search criteria:

Hiding Search Criteria

Another technique that you may wish to use is to hide some of the criteria, or to disable it so that a user receives the defaults as you’ve specified them but does not have the ability to change those defaults. You do this by:

• Constructing a User Class
• Setting the Options for the User Class
• Assigning the User Class to the Team Member

Constructing a User Class

A user class is a named set of privileges for using the system. You create a user class by:

• Clicking on the “User Class” icon on the main menu bar of the Monitor.

Where you find the “User Class” icon is determined by your system configuration. It is “usually” found on the “Manage” or “Team” or “Configure” menu. Once you find it and click it, you should see the following page:

This page shows you the list of all of the user classes currently define. In my demo environment, there are a number of classes already created. You may or may not have classes already set up. For this demo, let’s create a new user class by:

• Click on the “New” button on the User Class List page

The above page allows you to name a user class. For purposes of this demonstration, I’m going to name my user class “Only Demos”.

• Name your user class
• Click Save

Setting the Options for the User Class

Now that I’ve given my user class a name, the system responds by letting me select the options that I’d like to restrict or enable for this user class.

Within a user class, features are grouped by the page whose features are to be restricted.

• Change the list of rights to display to “Subject Search”

Now, from the list presented, let’s restrict the “Search Demo Attribute”. By default, users can change that attribute. For our demo, let’s disable that.

• Find the “Search Demo Attribute” in the list
• Uncheck the attribute
• Click “Save”

At this point, you have a new user class named whatever you named it (I named mine “Only Demos”. Now, all that remains is to assign that user class to one or more of your users. In so doing, they will no longer be able to change the “Demo” attribute on their search criteria.

Assigning the User Class to a Team Member

Navigate back to the “Lab Notebook – Members Page” page. Once there:

• Click the Pencil next to the team members name who’s search you wish to restrict:

On this screen:

• Change the “Class” drop down to the name of the class you previously created. In my case, I specify “Only Demos”

• Click Save

At this point, you will have made it so that the user can not change the Demo drop down list on the search criteria. You can further restrict the user to only using your predefined “Demo Subjects Search Criteria” using the steps outlined above.