Adding medical condition should allow certain special characters like '-'

[nus-pe-bot]

Steps to replicate: -addMedCon i/S1234578A c/Covid-19

expected output: successfully adds the medical condition to patient identified

actual output: "Medical condition name(s) should be alphanumeric, and multiple spaces are not allowed between letters and/or words."

I understand that this has been mentioned in the UG.

However, several medical conditions and diseases like "Covid-19" contain special characters and allowing user to use special characters would allow for a more accurate description of the medical condition.

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_{[original: nus-cs2103-AY2425S1/pe-interim#1145] [original labels: type.FeatureFlaw severity.Low]}

[TechRaj]

Team's Response

While we acknowledge that allowing special characters like hyphens could contribute to more specific descriptions of medical conditions, this behavior is intentional and documented in the User Guide. The decision to restrict medical condition names to alphanumeric characters only is based on our aim to ensure a consistent and streamlined user experience for our target audience.

The specific design decision to disallow special characters was driven by the following considerations:

1. Data Consistency and Searchability
   Allowing special characters can lead to inconsistencies in data entry, which would affect search operations and patient retrieval. For instance, some users might enter Covid19, others might use COVID-19, while others may enter covid_19. This variation can result in duplicated medical records or failure to correctly retrieve patient data. By enforcing alphanumeric-only inputs, we maintain data uniformity and simplify patient data searches, which is crucial in medical environments where accuracy is vital.

2. User Documentation
   This behavior is clearly stated in the User Guide. Specifically, the UG specifies that medical conditions should be alphanumeric. As such, the error message observed is accurate and consistent with the product’s intended functionality as documented.

3. PE Phase 2 Developer Response Considerations
   According to the PE Phase 2 Developer Response guidelines, bugs that arise due to intentional design choices documented in the user-facing manuals should not be considered valid bugs. Since the restriction on medical condition names is an intentional decision and has been explicitly mentioned in the User Guide, this report should be categorised as a NotInScope feature request rather than a bug.

Future Improvements

While we maintain that the current implementation is intentional and appropriate, we are open to considering this feedback as a potential enhancement for future versions. In the next iterations, we could explore allowing a limited set of special characters under well-defined rules to ensure continued data consistency.

Duplicate status (if any):

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