[log in to unmask],Net writes:
>Current electronic record systems tend to force a very sparse note
>taking style, consisting of little else besides a diagnosis (Read
>coded of course!). I would like to see computers give us the
>opportunity to record more information about consultations, not less,
>and use software to control the amount of detail that is displayed. 

1.  SIze of entry
2.  Scanning in images of documents

1.  Size of entry
I disagree.
Surgery Manager for instance allows equal facility with free text under
any of several headings, and codes added under those same headings.

The Exeter System also allows you to put as many lines in as you like,
with only the trifling inconvenience of pulling the carriage return
lever between them.

Do you by any chance have Vamp Medical?

Meditel S5 always irritated me by requiring a code at the start of a
note, whereas I tend to code after the end of the entry.

EMIS allows arbitrary amounts of verbiage I think, doesn't it?  You
might have to select a code and then hit A for additional or something,
its a while since I played with it in earnest.

Torex Premier allows a load of text - I think about a Gigabyte per
entry if you want.
Paul Rubner's free program, GP Records, allows a total of 2 MBytes per
patient narrative, the max contents of a DBase memo field, and
presumably will have gone on to use more than one record if peoiple
want to use more than that amount.

Ambridge was a bit limited, but you coul put in as many lines as you
wanted, if you didn't mind a few keystrokes.
If I recall correctly Update PCS ran out of space after a few hundred
characters, and you had to make another entry to carry on, but that has
long been supplanted.

The stuff I am using at the moment has a limit at 4 Gigabytes I think.

Genisyst - are you the surviving Genisyst user?

So no, not really.

2.  Scanning in images of documents
I have seen this demonstrated in Torex Premiere.  In common with
Meditel S6000 the Bormland Interbase underlying the clinical system
will store a scanned image in a BLOB field, just fine.  THey both seem
to use OLE or OLE2 and the images come up in suitable viewers.  Even I
can write that sort of stuff with a few lines of code in a modern
language.  It is here.
I think if you work at it you could get an image into the Foxpro files
that Vision uses, but it is one of the things Reuters have never
demonstrated to me, unlike the others who were very keen to show how it
works.




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