Introduction
The following application helps a pediatrician or an anxious parent compare their child's development according to NCHS (National Center for Health Statistics). The application uses their data collections and formulas to present the percentages in different areas.
Background
When a child arrives to a pediatrician, some of the basic criteria that are checked are the child's growth curves\charts. Currently, this is done by physicians manually, using hard copied growth charts.
An example of such growth charts, data used to create them, and how to calculate a child's growth percentile can be found here.
All this application does is request the child's data from the parent\pediatrician and insert it into a formula that calculates the child's progress in comparison with others of his\her age. This is done using the formulas created by the NCHS and a simple Z Table for calculating the final percentage.
In this example, the child's BMI is larger than 93.94% of the children his age.
I originally wrote the code for Google's android competition, so the way data is stored is kind of backwards (hard coded).
Using the Code
Each of the data sets used in the formula is held in classes in arrays of doubles. Every four values is a separate limit.
A child has to be between the two limits, and then you have found the values that need to be used for him to calculate his percentiles (the lower limit). If the child's value is larger than the highest limit, then he is 100% in that area (over developed). If the child's value is smaller than the lowest limit, then the child is 0% in that area (under-developed).
Those values that start with 2.0 represent values used for females. Those values that start with 1.0 represent values used for males.
Points of Interest
This is the first project I have done that allowed me to integrate medicine and programming together. As time passes and I continue with my medical studies, I see more and more opportunities to use the two studies together. I hope that we can take old school doctors and make them a bit more hi-techie...
I had a chance to sharpen my statistical skills and actually use an Z-Table for the first time in my life (not including University).
