It may happen that there are two or more patient records in the RippleDown database corresponding to the same patient. Each may contain partial information for the  patient. This situation should be fixed as RippleDown interpretations rely heavily on the historical information in the patient record and so this needs to be both accurate and complete.

To fix this situation, RippleDown provides the facility to merge one patient record into the other. The procedure is as follows:

  1. Click the ‘Database‘ button on the BMD main screen to show the list of patients in the RippleDown database.
  2. Select the 2 patients to be merged. This can be done by selecting the first patient using the mouse, holding the CTRL key down, then selecting the second patient.
  3. Click the ‘Merge Patients‘ button.
  4. A dialog will appear showing the proposed patient record for the merged patient.
  5. By default, the second patient selected on the patient list will be merged into the first, and then deleted. In the example above, the patient record for “Browne” will be merged into “Brown” and then the patient record for “Browne” will be deleted.
  6. If however you require the first patient to be merged into the second, click the ‘Reverse Merge‘ button.
  7. Click the ‘OK‘ button to complete the merge.

Note: This operation cannot be undone. Hence, as a safety precaution, you are prevented from merging two patients if they have different genders or different dates of birth.
If you are certain that you want to merge two patients that have either a different gender or date of birth, edit the incorrect patient record before merging.