I raise the question how a tool permitting us to follow our own endeavours, habits and thoughts in an electronic diary can be fitted to medical needs

2. PHENOMENALOG Presentation of a program for private diary keeping It is developed for users to arrange, furnish, adapt and use according to their own habits and needs, personal relevancies and themes. And it includes options for supplementing diary text with pictograms as a kind of shorthand for typicality's in their everyday life.

3. Welcome

4. Main Window

5. The glyphs menu

6. Body

7. Body-window

8. Phenomenalog-structure

9. RELEVANT LINKS How can we improve telemedical person-to-person communication and educate patients in their IT handling of their handicaps by ways of IT-self-monitoring? Efforts like www. newhealthpartnerships .org , www. improvingcroniccare .org , www. patienteducation . stanford . edu www. expertpatients . nhs . uk are introducing concepts of ”self-monitoring”, ”shared electronic journals” and ”patientt education ”. The prototype freeware electronic diary PHENOMENALOG can be downloadet from www.phenomenalog.dk. The windows version now comes with an installer, extremely easy to start up. Mac and Linux versions still demand that user install fonts in fontfolders t

10. Virtual patient1

11. Virtual patient2

12. Virtual patient3

13. Virtual patient4

14. Virtual patient5

15. Virtual patient6

16. Virtual patient7

17. Virtual patient 8

18. Virtual patient 10

19. Statistics This is an accumulating scrolling field, the data of which can be transferred to other applications. In its present format it is of very limited use It is a pressing task to construct a process to transform it to curves, with options for zooming in and out, so user is empowered to discover possible causal relationships.

20. Daily glyph - distribution Another type of distancing perspective is available through the automatic extraction of the glyphs used, to illustrate their distribution over each 24 hour period. The layout is hampered by the limited space available. But the awkward solution at least suceeds in leaving room for capturing 4-5 glyphs in any of the 144 10-minute periods around the clock. This offers a possibility for the user to page back and forth in the diary, looking for recurrent and/or exceptional behavioural patterns.

21. Perspectives The prototype presented can justly be criticized for lack of a well-defined target-group. It constitutes an attempt to create a starting point for networked cooperation about further cross disciplinary and cross-cultural developments in very different directions, -as hinted in this preliminary map: ( and for all such target-groups at least in the direction of adding new required glyphs to the stock,e.g. symptoms)

22. Example #1 It is up to the single user to improvise the glyph-button placings – and maybe after a while to introduce some kind of system. Here is an example from one user:

23. Example #2 And here the author’s own unclear mess:

25. The other glyphs available Here follows, to complete the picture, the remaining tables of glyphs available in the present Phenomenalog prototype. The 450 glyphs are only a beginning. Many of them have to be improved, and many more will have to be added. 2000 to 3000 is the primary goal, - which ones will be decided on the basis o advice from prospective users

26. Children

27. Social

28. Householding

29. Food

30. Cultivate

31. Smoking

32. Info

33. Outside

34. Sport

35. State

36. Reflection

37. Oikos-window

38. Credits The concept of Phenomenalog and the first prototype-versions were developed in 1994-1995 in collaboration between Bjørn Nake, Birgit Leick Lampe and students at the department of psychology, University of Copenhagen, and in the teaching of qualitative research methods, around the Experimental Home project there (1980-1999) The continued testing and development of the HyperCard prototype versions was since 1996 conducted in a collaboration between Steen K. Andersen and Kresten Bjerg, and intensified 2004- 2008 in the thorough redesign in its conversion to the new "REVOLUTION" integrated development environment, with the advantage of creating standalone versions for Windows, Macintosh and Linux operating systems. Credit is due to the Institute of Psychology for hosting Kresten Bjerg also after his pensioning in 1998, and to Steen K. Andersen for his thousands of hours of voluntary work on the project. Students from Copenhagen Technical School have also contributed with some of the glyphs. Credits are also due to Scandinavian Tobacco Company for sponsoring the start of the project with 8 of the first Macintosh PowerBooks in 1994. Credits are due to resources from the communities of "HyperCard" and "Revolution" developers, among these foremost Mark Schonewille (Economy-X-talk.com) Sarah Reichelt and her DateTime.rev collection, Richmond Mathewson for his Paint widgets, Eric Chatonet, Klaus Major, Mark Talluto and others. Poul Grønhøj has patiently tested out version after version after version of the program. Concerning the program adress [email_address] Concerning he broader bacgrounds of the endeavour see www.bjerg.psy.ku.dk Concerning the actual program, see www.phenomenalog.dk Concerning IT-political aspects see www.frihedsraad.wetpaint.com (presently only in danish) Latest publication: http://obs.obercom.pt/index.php/obs/article/view/198