Excel or Access for surgery booking system?

[nerdface]

Hi there,

I'm kind of stumped here and am getting in a muddle. I've got some reasonable excel skills but haven't used it regularly for nearly 8 years so i'm rusty. I do, however, feel pretty confident experimenting but i'm struggling with user error here.

I need a system to book people in for surgery. I have an excel spreadsheet with tabs for each month, then dates in column a (weekdays only), name, some patient details, reasons for the op, etc etc. it doesn't really do too much calculating other than alerting us if there is more than 3 ops per day. Wht i didn't bank on is how little drs know about computers. They're constantly opening the file at the same time as someone else (mostly because that someone else hasn't saved and closed it and has then walked off), or opening it as read only and then not realising so the data is lost. this means that come the date of the op we're often surprised as either too many people turn up or nobody does.

I was thinking of using access to create some kind of database but i'm REALLY rusty on that and i'm not too sure where i'd even start. Would i be able to create forms in excel? Could multiple users add data at the same time whilst i fiddle in the background if needed?

Sorry if this is rambly, i'm under pressure and not as smart as i thought i was!

Cheers,
Nerd

[protonLeah]

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[platinumphoenix]

I realize this isn't particularly helpful but Excel or Access alone are not great platforms for what you're trying to accomplish. You will likely continue to run into file lock issues even if you move your solution to MS Access and I have yet to find a good (low maintenance) way to mitigate this without involving a collaborative file sharing solution such as SharePoint.

You didn't describe much in terms of requirements but, based on some assumptions I've made from reading your post, the best cheap solution that comes to mind would be something like Office Online (if available to you) or Google Sheets. Though, since you're dealing with patient data, a free web-based solution may raise some security flags.

If Excel and Access are truly the only platforms available to you then you might look into creating a "Split Database" using MS Access. It's essentially a single central .mdb with multiple other .mdb's (one per user) linked to it. That way, each user can open their own copy (presumably containing a form to update your tables) without locking the primary copy. This is not a great solution as maintenance is tricky and any updates will be a horrible process especially since you've stated your users aren't very tech savvy.

[nerdface]

It's super helpful in that I'm thinking i shouldn't waste my time learning access and creating something which they'll just break!

I do suspect that there might be objections to using an online system. It shouldn't be this complicated! We used to use a paper diary and they'd all just stick stickers into it with patients details and then write a bit of extra info. Now all they need to do is the same but in excel. I'm just a bit stumped.

Someone mentioned forms in excel, I wonder if that could be a solution... Though it still wouldn't solve the locking each other out thing. Baffled.

Thanks for replying.

[platinumphoenix]

Further reading FWIW. http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/10-things/10-plus-reasons-to-split-an-access-database/

Good luck