On Tue, 2004-10-05 at 15:33, Andrew Ho wrote: > On Mon, 5 Oct 2004, Tim Churches wrote: > ... > > Surely the whole point of computerised clinical information systems is > > that the information is captured in a computable form, > > Tim, > Not exactly - some information must be "computable", other information > just need to be captured for subsequent retrievable.
True. But I would argue that capturing textual or quantitative information as images severely limits its utility. > > > which a raster image of someone's scrawl definitely isn't? > > For example, a digitized radiograph is similarly not "computable". > However, electronic storage and retrieval of such is useful. Sure, but that's because the morphology of the image is of intrinsic interest, whereas the morphology of someone's handwriting is on no interest (unless you are a graphologist) - it is what they record in that written script that matters. -- Tim C PGP/GnuPG Key 1024D/EAF993D0 available from keyservers everywhere or at http://members.optushome.com.au/tchur/pubkey.asc Key fingerprint = 8C22 BF76 33BA B3B5 1D5B EB37 7891 46A9 EAF9 93D0
