• TechnologyInnovator
• EnterpriseInnovator
• SecurityInnovator
• WirelessInnovator 

• NextInnovator(at)Live.com
• No spam, subscription newsletters, solicitations, or attachments please!
• Attn: Harold Abraham, Chief Innovator

• Over the River
• eMarketer 
• TechnologyPundits
• Security Insights Blog 
• McAfee AudioParasitics
• Strand Consult
• Ovum
• The Eye For Innovation
• Rethink Research
• Innovation Insights
• Innoblog
• Strategy and Innovation
• The Gadgeteer
• Handheld Speech
• Ghost City

• IT Headline News
• Mobile Enterprise Headline News
• Grid & Supercomputing Headline News
• Bio & Life Science Computing Headlines
• Nano-Computing Headline News
• Telecom Headline News
• Network Headline News
• Desktop & Workstation Headline News
• Server Headline News
• Chip Headline News
• OS Headline News
• Storage Headline News
• Enterprise Security Headline News

 

Digital Pen and Paper technology is very quickly proving to be a major force in clinical trials, hospitals, and home health care.

More than a trend, this technology, developed by Anoto Group, is on a critically evaluated trajectory that will likely make it a health care standard. A major factor for its quick acceptance is that it provides such an easy and straight-forward way to capture handwritten text and quickly transmit it from paper to digital formats.

In clinical trials it is accelerating the development of new drugs by making trial processes more efficient and accurate, and without the burden of learning new system interfaces for data collection and document management.

The Digital Pen and Paper were the focus of attention at the international DIA conference in Florida last month where Actelion Pharmaceuticals presented Anoto's application touting it as way to help accelerate the development of new drugs by making trial processes more efficient and accurate. Dr. Massimo Raineri of Actelion Pharmaceuticals explained that "cutting the time to submit an NDA by a few months has evident advantages both from the point of view of the patients, who can profit earlier of potentially life-saving treatments, as well as from the financial point of view; in clinical development every day you save can be worth a millions of dollars."

According to Anoto's partner, Digital Pen Systems, nursing home facilities in California, North Carolina, Arizona, and Wisconsin are using this innovative technology to streamline the documentation process and improve communications among clinical team decision makers for resident care planning. It allows nurses and assistants to complete their daily and weekly documentation as they normally do. Except that now whatever is recorded in ink on their paper charts is digitally recorded by the pen, and the data is immediately transmitted to a central (often online) server, where staff can immediately access the clinical reports and monitor resident status.

This eliminates the need to have someone key in all the data by hand - an incredible time and money saver. Also, home care providers are bringing the pens on the road with them, making each patients information immediately available, and ensuring that every patient has been actually been cared for.

This innovative technology is being utilized wherever paper forms are required and accuracy is paramount. Its benefits include speedier forms processing, automatic backup of data (especially where compliance requires paper copies to be kept), exceptional ease of use with no learning curve, and traceability. The pen writes in ink just like any pen does and provides a natural experience for the user. Doctors love the pen because it doesn't distract their attention from the patient the way PDAs do.

The pen is actually a wireless data capture device with a built in camera that records the location of the written ink on a page by a nearly invisible field of dots which are specially printed on any paper form. The pen can create an image of a complete page as if it were photocopied, or convert handwritten notes into typed text with extraordinary accuracy. A user may even create boxes that when checked by the pen work just like a button one would click on the web.

This new technology is increasing the morale and productivity of care-giving staff, and increasing the overall quality of care by making the collection and processing of data more efficient, accurate, cost effective, and user friendly - all the while keeping the process as natural as possible for the user through the universal experience of pen and paper.