On Tuesday 06 Mar 2007 9:00 pm, Shyam Visweswaran wrote: > Does this gizmo let you write in the normal > fashion on the paper as well as make a digital > copy?
Yes Precisely. That is what I found so attractive. It clips on to a pad, and you write on paper. A copy automatically goes into the gizmo (displayed on the screen as you write) to be downloaded later. Incidentally there was this news report about a bloke who used a pen scanner to scan his exam question paper and sent it over a cell phone to cheat-mates. Apparently this company will sell such pen scanners as well - but that is less useful to me than this gizmo - for which I see loads of possibilities. While this machine's capabilities are currently limited - I think it is a step forward in the tech that is being offered at a focused user-end level. I foresee a day when each patient's bedside will have a (wireless) clipboard with electronic paper - a screen on which you write like ordinary paper while what you write gets transferred to a central memory as you write. With my hands in gloves I can request a nurse or assistant to hold up the chart so I can look for some detail or other - perhaps an investigation report that can be called up at the touch of a button (as can be done now by the turn of a page). Even better than paper - I should be able to see X rays and scans on the board - an act that is now physically more unwieldy with paper, requiring the extraction of scans from envelopes and/or moving to a separate viewing area. All these details would also be viewable from any terminal. And the other uses that patient case sheets are put to can all be done without loss of communication. Let me explain. There are occasions when a patient case sheet is "removed" from general view because it is taken for short periods of time for some purpose - like being shown to some doctor or other, or to a pharmacy for cross checking something, or is being viewed by a billing clerk. Perhaps a doctor finds that the instruction issued by a colleague is illegible or unclear. In all these instances the details can be accessed via the central memory on any suitable terminal without having to remove the case papers - or the electronic pad from the patient's bedside. That is the way forward. And with the virtual elimination of paper records - patient records can be maintained for decades rather than the vastly shorter periods as of now. shiv
