RCcompat is a simple-to-use tool for estimating the number of units of blood one should test in order to find the desired quantity of units compatible with a patient's antigens. The values produced by the application are not a guarantee, they are just estimates based on widely-available statistical data. You may have to test more units than the application suggests to find matches.
Download RCcompat
RCcompat for Windows:
Version 3.0 Setup EXE -
Version 3.0 Portable ZIP
All the requisite libraries are included in this download.
It has been tested to work on Windows 2000, XP, Vista, 7, and 8.
RCcompat for Other Platforms:
Get Source Files
Right now, for all other platforms you'll need to build the program
from source. This requires Qt development libraries to be installed.
Building is as simple as running "qmake", and then "make".
Someday I hope to build system-specific packages for other operating
systems.
How To Use
Using RCcompat is actually quite easy. While there is a system of menus for completing various actions, most of the user's time will likely be spent in the main window. This window is divided into three separate parts: 1) Antigen Selection, 2) Rhesus Factor, 3) Desired Quantity, and 4) Output.
Now say you have a patient with the following antigens: E, M, and Fyb, with and Rh+ blood type. Click the E button in the main window and notice that the Rhesus Factor selection will become active, and "Set Rh Factor" shows up in the output. The statistical presence of the E antibody varies based on the Rhesus Factor. Just choose Positive and now a computation of 1.75 units displays. As you click M, notice that the interface updates automatically. Finally clicking Fyb shows that 46.91 units would have to be checked. Also notice that the result field turned red. This suggests that getting additional resources is likely required (the threshold for this is user-customizable). Finally, notice that this calculation was for a single unit. If the patient were to need 5 matching units, simply use the quantity selector to scale the result up.
Customizing RCcompat
Being a smaller application, opportunities for customizing are somewhat limited. The cyan-to-red output field color change is currently the only customizable option. This lets users change when the output field will switch colors. The default is for any result over 10 units.
Special Thanks
I'd like to thank Judith Brook (my mom) for approaching me to make an application like this. It was a great way to learn some of the ins-and-outs of creating a C++ GUI application both in Linux and in Windows, which was something I always wanted to do.