The Importance of Backups and Snapshots

Imagine if you lost all your anticoagulation data by accident or through a fault in the computer hardware! Regular back ups of your data to another storage device is absolutely essential. Have more than one line of defence…three lines would be ideal. If you depend on a third party to do this for you e.g. your IT or IS department, please check with them periodically that the backups are being done.

We also have a data snapshot facility; this allows you to take a quick copy of the data on to the hard drive of your PC or server. Snapshots allow you save your work regularly, especially when you have just processed a large number of patients.

It doesn’t replace a back up system, but it is particularly useful in environments that are unstable, for example, if you’re using a laptop on battery or if your hospital has generator tests without adequate warning.

You can take a snapshot at anytime or you can schedule them to take place automatically on entering and leaving the system. It only takes a few minutes usually depending on the size of your system. Note: Snapshots and other maintenance routines require no other users logged into the system.

Backups to separate media e.g. floppy disks, CDs, tapes, other computers, is one of the most important activities—it is your lifeline if something untoward happens to your system.

Finally, beware you don't accidentally backup your damaged database overwriting your good backup instead of restoring your good backup overwriting your damaged database!

12^th Annual User Group – 22^nd November 2004

We are starting to plan the 12^th Annual User Group meeting in the Lake District. I would welcome any ideas for short talks. Please let me know at syd@4s-dawn.com

UK Local User Group Meetings

Here are the locations and dates of the forthcoming UK Local User Groups. Look out for a mailing from us with the programmes. We are still seeking speakers for 10-minute presentations on any Dawn AC or related topic. Please email or call if you could help here.

Tuesday 18th May 2004 - East Pennine - Travel Inn, Wakefield

Wednesday 19th May - West Pennine - Travel Inn, Preston East

Thursday 20th May - Scotland - Travel Inn, Motherwell

Tuesday 25th May - Midlands - Travel Inn, Leicester, Forest East

Wednesday 26th May - South West, Beachlands Hotel, Weston Super Mare

Thursday 27th May - South East, Travel Inn, Harrow

Dawn AC Version 6.07

Version 6.07, a development release, is now available and contains improvements to the Wordlink module. Please contact us if you wish to upgrade. To take advantage of this release you need to have Wordlink. The main feature added is the ability to create questionnaire in Word and store the results of the questionnaire in the treatment notes for a patient.

Benchmarking Run April 2004

With a few weeks you should receive your data collection disks for returning your data.

Syd Stewart

End of Newsletter

“We Really Care"

“Dawn AC is an easy to use, adaptable, powerful, and comprehensive PC based Anticoagulation Software System. It covers the complete oral anticoagulation life cycle with Induction and Maintenance Modules “

“Lancet Nov 7th 1998, Multi-centred Randomised Trial using Dawn AC shows computer aided dosage leads to INR control 20 to 30% better than medical experts”