Pen-Based Computer Reads Doctors’ Handwriting

A clipboard-sized wireless pen-based computer system by Total Healthcare Solutions Inc. (THS) will actually read a doctor’s handwriting, the company says, and add the recorded notes automatically to a patient’s chart with no intervening dictation. The Windows-based PenChart system is trainable to each doctor’s methods and unique handwriting, a process the firm claims takes about 20 minutes to learn.

The system is currently being used at five Connecticut sites where THS says it has logged more than 30,000 hours on the devices in about 1,000 clinical settings, to study the technology needs of health care providers and debug the system.

During the development period, THS researchers found a way to give structure where there seemed to be none in the way doctors recorded notes on their patients, said the firm. The most difficult feature to pin down was how each doctor uniquely conducts a question-answer interview in order to determine what is wrong with a patient.

PenChart lets doctors use a stylus to update patient information like history, laboratory tests, diagnosis, and recommended treatment.

PenChart runs on Fujitsu’s Stylistic 1000, a wireless Windows 95-based tablet PC, using wireless local area network (LAN) components from BreezeCom, of California. BreezeNet’s SA-PC PRO card sends and receives patient data from a BreezeNet AP-10 Pro Access Point, connected to a facility’s wired LAN and central database server. At least one access point is required, the firm said.

THS researchers said when designing the system, they wanted it to be invisible, adaptable, simple to use, and small.

Dr. Richard Wiklund of Yale’s New Haven hospital said he uses PenChart to get a patient’s history from the hospital’s central server as he moves from one patient to the next, jotting down his notes. He added the system looks like a clipboard and not a computer terminal, so patients seem more comfortable.

(Contact: Timothy "Bo" Kemper, for Cyber Power Systems, 847-291-1616, E-mail kemper@sspr.com)