I have a table of patients
patient id, name etc
105 Smith, John
107 Doe, Jane

I have many lab values for each patient linked by patient id
patient id, date, labtest, value
eg; 105, 8/10, sodium, 140
105 8/10 potassium, 4
107 8/8 sodium 130

I want to make a layout based on patients that for each patient will display lab data in rows and columns

Rows down will be dates working back from today
today, today-1, today-2, etc

Columns across will be different test names (total of 20-30) to display
test1,test2, test 3, test4

In the cell will go the value

eg: sodium potassium chloride bicarb
8/10 140 4 100 20
8/8 3.5
8/1 140 105

There may be days skipped and may be empty cells on a given date.
It seems like it should be easy but I am having a lot of trouble. Would appreciate any advice

This is not something FileMaker wants to do easily. Check out...

http://www.spf-15.com/fmExamples/

...for two "Cross Tab" examples. Click on the "grid" layout in each, then take them apart and see how they were done.

Hi John and swf !

I'm anaesthesiologist, and I'm use to work with lab values. Got a look to SF example. Look great but seems to be much complex for our usual needs.

You could simply have a layout four each patient, in this layout a portal pointing to the labs value table. Each row begins with the date followed by each value for this date:
Date Na + / K + / Cl-
08/12/05 135 4 95
08/11/05 137 3,5 96

When you create your portal, select a way of sorting from high to low, also the most recent date will appear at the top of the portal. In the relationship graph you check to create labs values fron patient (also delete).

If you don't want to enter new values from the portal, you can enter them in global fiels and after populate a new record of values lab with a define fields script.

If you are not a beginner all that explanations are useless, and I apologize prevently ....

HTH a colleague
-------------------------------
Patrick Odelin
La Reunion Island (Indian Ocean)
[email protected]
GMT + 4 hours