Body Measurements
A scale gives you one number. A body composition analyser gives you forty, and the one that matters is rarely the weight: a patient who lost 4 kg and 3 of them were muscle has had a bad month, not a good one.
The Body measurements screen records both — the tape-and-scale reading a clinic has always taken, and the full analyser result when there is a machine in the room. It is one list either way.
Where to Find It
| Screen | Address |
|---|---|
| A patient's own measurements | /view-patient/{id} → Body measurements |
| Every measurement, across all patients | /body-measurements |
| The switch | /plugin-settings |
The clinic-wide screen sits in the sidebar under Physiotherapy. It follows the Body measurements switch, not the physiotherapy one — turning physiotherapy on does not bring it, and turning it off does not take it away.
Taking a measurement
Add measurement opens one form, in sections. Only the date is required. Everything else, every single field, may be left empty — a printout with half its numbers unreadable still saves.
The basics
Always open, and on their own they are the whole form a clinic with a scale and a tape ever fills:
Date · the visit it belongs to · weight · height · target weight · waist · hip · neck · body fat % · activity level · notes.
The analyser sections
Five sections underneath, each collapsed until you open it. The number on a section's header says how many of its fields carry a value, so a closed section never hides anything from you:
| Section | What goes in it |
|---|---|
| Body composition | Skeletal muscle mass, body fat mass, soft lean mass, fat-free mass, protein, minerals, bone mineral content |
| Body water | Total body water, intracellular, extracellular, and the ECW/TBW ratio — the fluid retention figure |
| Segmental analysis | Lean mass and fat mass for the right arm, left arm, trunk, right leg and left leg — ten figures |
| Indices and rates | Visceral fat level or area, basal metabolic rate, total energy expenditure, the 0–100 composition score, body age, SMI, phase angle |
| Suggested targets | The fat control and muscle control figures the machine prints. A minus means lose, a plus means gain |
| Measurement details | Which device, and the time of day — two readings taken fasting and after lunch are not comparable |
The fields are named after the measurement, not the brand. An InBody is what most Egyptian clinics own, but a Tanita or an Omron prints the same family of numbers under other names, and they all fit this form.
Right and left are the patient's
In the segmental section, "right arm" is the patient's right arm, exactly as the machine printed it — not the side of the screen it appears on.
What the system works out for you
These are never typed in and never stored. They are computed each time the measurement is read, so they cannot fall out of step with the numbers behind them:
| Figure | Worked out from |
|---|---|
| BMI and its class | Weight and height |
| Waist-to-hip ratio | Waist and hip |
| Fat mass | The machine's own figure, or weight × body fat % |
| Fat percentage | The typed figure, or fat mass ÷ weight |
| Lean mass | The machine's fat-free mass, or weight − fat mass |
| Muscle % of weight | Skeletal muscle mass ÷ weight |
| Fluid balance | The printed ECW/TBW, or extracellular ÷ total body water |
| Left–right difference | Right minus left, for the arms and for the legs, and only when both sides were measured |
A machine that prints the fat percentage but not the mass, and one that does the reverse, produce the same record.
If you enter the weight, the fat mass and the fat percentage, and the three disagree by more than a kilogram, the form says so before saving — and then saves what you entered. The device's own numbers win over the arithmetic.
The device's printout
Attach the analyser's result to the measurement itself. Not to the patient's documents: it is the evidence behind one reading, it is listed on that reading, and deleting the reading takes it with it.
- A PDF or a photograph of the printout is stored as it is.
- A CSV or Excel export from the device is read, and the form fills in from it. Every field it filled is marked as coming from the file. Check them, correct anything that came out wrong, and save — nothing is stored until you do.
If the file cannot be read as a device export — it is a PDF, its columns mean nothing to us, or it holds a whole day of results rather than one — the form says so and keeps the file attached. You then type the numbers. It never fills in some of them and leaves you guessing which.
If the export names a patient who is not the one you have open, you are told which detail differs and asked before anything is filled in.
The clinic-wide screen
/body-measurements is every measurement your clinic has taken, newest first, across all patients. The same records as the patient's own tab — one list, two ways in. A measurement added here appears on the patient's tab, and one added there appears here.
Each row shows the patient, the date, the weight, the BMI and its class, the fat percentage, and who recorded it. A row that carries a full analyser result is marked, and so is one that carries an attachment.
Click any row to open that reading on its own page — the whole result, every section, with a url you can send to a colleague. The same page opens from the eye on the patient's own tab.
Search above the table takes a patient's name, phone or file number.
Filters: patient · date range · BMI class · with or without a composition result · with or without an attachment · who recorded it. They combine, and the quick chips above them are the common ones — the last 30 days, and everything with a composition result.
Add, edit and delete all work from this screen. Adding here asks for the patient first and then opens the same form the patient's file uses.
Exporting
CSV and Excel buttons sit at the top of the screen. Both carry whatever filters are applied — the file holds what the page is showing, not the whole history — and both write every column, not the six the table has room for: the patient and their file number, the date and time, who recorded it, the computed figures (BMI and its class, waist-to-hip ratio, fat mass, lean mass, muscle %, fluid balance), then every analyser metric including the ten segmental figures, the attachment count and the notes.
Prefer Excel where the numbers matter. A bare CSV leaves Excel guessing — in some language settings it reads 0.383 as a date and drops the leading zero off a file number — while the Excel file says which cells are numbers and which are text. The CSV carries a byte-order mark so Arabic names open as Arabic.
The history behind one reading
A reading's own page carries an Activity log tab, for anyone who may see reports. It says who recorded the reading, and for every later edit, which number changed and what it was before — a corrected weight is a question the clinic eventually asks. Every metric is audited, not only the tape figures.
The tab is loaded when you open it, so a reading nobody questions costs nothing to display.
Who can do what
| Sees the screens | Adds, edits, deletes, attaches | |
|---|---|---|
| Medical records — view | ✅ | ❌ |
| Medical records — edit | ✅ | ✅ |
A user without medical-record access sees neither the tab nor the menu entry.
Common questions
We have no analyser. Is the form slower now? No. The basics are the same fields in the same order, and the five analyser sections stay closed unless you open one.
We bought a machine last month. What happens to old readings? They open as they always did, with the new sections empty. Nothing was rewritten.
Can the system read our printouts on paper? No — a scan or a photograph is stored, not read. Only the device's own CSV or Excel export is read, because a misread number on a medical record is worse than a typed one.
Two measurements on the same day? Allowed. They are separate readings, and the time-of-day field is there to tell them apart.