Andrew Ho wrote:
On Tue, 5 Oct 2004, Calle Hedberg wrote:
...
I don't think you will find many (over-worked?) doctors willing to wade
through 20 or 30 years of (other doctor's) handwriting imagery to find
facts pertinent to current problems or treatment regimen.
Calle,
There will always be a mix of free text and structured data input. What
we are talking about is capture of free text as image vs. character-code
via keyboard entry.
you mean: 'narrative' and 'structured capture'. That's not the same as
'raster images of text'. I would have thought the latter should be
avoided at all costs apart from signatures and a few other odd
situations; I may be speaking out of turn where there are doctors who
have no computer literacy at all, but one would have to question the
wisdom of creating a future cost in terms of difficulty of handling
scanned text input against the cost of basic computer entry training, or
a system where dictation + transcribing can be used (thereby employing
more support people as well).
- thomas beale
